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NURSERY NOONINGS. 



NURSERY NOONINGS. 



By GAIL HAMILTON, 



AUTHOR OF 









"WOMAN'S "WORTH AND WORTHLESSNESS," "TWELVE MILES 
FROM A LEMON," ETC. 




NEW YORK: 
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FEAKKLIN SQUARE. 

18 7 5. 




?5 ;^h~ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

HAEPER & BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. The Baby in Breeches 7 

II. Dead Leaves 33 

III. Bringing up Parents 63 

IV. A Man-Child 101 

Y. The Children op the Church 115 

VI. Lessons to be Learned from the Young 

Republic 134 

VII. What Enemy hath Done this? 156 

VIII. Disciplining Children 174 

IX. The Wards of the Nation 192 

X. Separation....; 201 

XI. Who is Who? 224 

XII. Mothers as Guardians „...,... 232 

XIII. Home Ways and Foreign Ways 251 

XIV. Baby-talk 282 



s 



NURSERY NOONINGS. 



i. 

THE BABY IN BREECHES. 

That "the baby" should be in breeches at 
all was owing- to the other baby. There was 
no call for that baby. There were babies 
enough before. When, as breakfast drew near 
its' close, Harry was heard thumping slowly 
down the stairs, pit-pat, pit-pattering through 
the parlors and the library, and presenting 
himself at the dining-room door in fresh 
white frock and radiant face, emitting angelic 
w r ar-whoops of delight, the old house seemed 
full of babies. When he rushed around the 
room with fixed eyes, bent head, and shoul- 
ders thrust forward in frenzied eagerness for 
a chair, and when he made ^ood his divine 



8 NUKSEBY NOONINGS. 

right to a seat at the table by pushing his 
chair headlong into a place regardless of what 
broadcloth or ruffles might interpose; when 
he had painfully climbed up into the adult 
chair and brought his precious nose very near- 
ly to a level with the table — with what serene 
delight, with what entire self -approbation and 
world -satisfaction, did he gaze around upon 
us, his aspiring, ambitious, unsatisfied elders ! 
With what sweet frankness he poked his sud- 
den fingers into the peach preserve ! With 
what sublime abstraction did he upset all the 
cups and saucers in his endeavor to reach the 
oranges! What a small thing it seemed to 
him, in flashes of adventurousness, to rise in 
his chair, climb up on the table, and creep 
along to the otherwise unattainable sugar- 
bowl; and when a blind and unreasonable 
prejudice interfered with this, his simple and 
honorable ambition, what hearty howls attest- 
ed his keen sense of right to life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of sugar, till some true friend, 



THE BABY IN BREECHES. 9 

more open to conviction than his bigoted pro- 
genitors, set the sugar-bowl on the floor, and 
restored the equilibrium of the universe ! 

Certainly Harry was baby enough to satisfy 
a reasonable mind. His ignorance was of the 
most approved pattern, and penetrated every 
fastness in the whole province of knowledge. 
He not only, like Sir Thomas More, did not 
know Greek at three years of age, but he was 
very imperfectly acquainted with English. 
He had never so much as heard whether there 
be any alphabet. He knew how to tumble all 
the collars, ribbons, and trinkets out of the up- 
per drawer into a kaleidoscopic confusion. He 
could toss Billy the fireman toward the ceiling 
in such eccentric orbits that he would be sure 
to strike against the vase and upset the flowers 
on his way down. But of any useful knowl- 
edge, or of any knowledge that promised to be 
useful, he was destitute to a degree that would 
have charmed the heart of the most devoted 
believer in vital statistics. 



10 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

Bat another king arose who knew not Jo- 
seph. Another baby must needs come peer- 
ing and prying into the world, and Baby Har- 
ry must abdicate. The badges of his royalty 
must go. All his little cambric flounces, all 
his lovely silken-stitched flannel petticoats, the 
folds and tucks and ruffles and ribbons of his 
infantile grace — the insignia of his innocence, 
the vestiges of his heavenly creation — were 
to be ruthlessly rent away, and he was to 
make his debut in the straight lines, plane 
surfaces, monotonous hues, and unmitigated 
bifurcations of the un beautiful sex — the sex 
which is not lovely in itself, and which bor- 
rows no loveliness from its dress ; for even 
the most thorough advocate of the equality of 
the sexes must admit that the handsome man 
is but a rough and primitive creation com- 
pared with the handsome woman, and that 
while the plain woman, by correct combina- 
tions of color and outline, can at least reduce 
her plainness to its lowest terms, and some- 



THE BABY IN BREECHES. 11 

times combine it altogether out of sight, the 
plain man has nothing for it but to put on 
his hat and coat and fight it out on that line. 
Of course we all know that Harry must 
come to it in time; but why array him pre- 
maturely in the sombre garments of man- 
hood ? Why put his baby ignorance and in- 
nocence in such grotesque contrast with his 
manly garb ? It is only for his brief blossom- 
ing that he can have the beauty of drapery. 
Once out of it — he returns, he returns, he 
returns no more. Once robbed of his cam- 
brics and muslins, and there remains for him 
through life nothing but a dreary waste of 
trousers — a pitiless stretch of dun broadcloth, 
scarcely brightened, certainly not relieved, by 
the stiffness of starched and uncompromising 
linen. The time may come in the flood-tide 
of youth and love when he will put a bouquet 
in his button-hole. In his famished craving 
for color he may possibly indulge in a blue 
necktie or a pink-bordered handkerchief; but 



12 NURSEEY NOONINGS. 

not for him the broad expanses of lustrous 
hues; never for him the rainbow tints, the 
sunset Mendings, wherein his sister may lux- 
uriate. It is only the short, sweet morning 
bloom of his babyhood that can be tricked out 
in curve and color, in feathers and flowers and 
all fantastic finery. 

But the decree goes forth. Off come the 
bobbing little petticoats that I love, the plump 
little sleeves so full of the plump little arms, 
the baby waist that has nothing in common 
with the tyrant man, and never so much as 
suggests the arrogance and domination of the 
oppressing sex — and Baby Harry goes into 
breeches and ecstasies. 

But I have my revenge. With the robes he 
has not put on the soul of manhood. His aw- 
ful innocence is too fresh from heaven to be 
smothered by jacket and trousers. He has by 
no means yet unlearned the contortions and 
climbings, the crawlings and rollings, of his 
lost estate, and his clothes have hard work to 



THE BABY IN BREECHES. 13 

stay on. It is only by the skin of their teeth 
that the trousers keep connection with the 
jacket. He emerges from his dressing-room 
dainty and decorous, "close buttoned to the 
chin," collar straight, shoes tied, stockings fast 
■ — a little man. An hour passes, and the little 
man has one shoe off, the string of the other 
gone. One red stocking has been displaced 
by a black and white striped one, with the heel 
cocked defiantly over his instep, and the other 
stocking is reefed around his ankle. Both 
bare, brown, battered knees are surmounted 
with a white cotton crown, and the minute 
breeches are rucked up as high as they will 
go around the minute legs. Buttons have 
treacherously parted company with button- 
holes, and alow and aloft bears Harry his flags 
of truce. Dear little dilapidated man — com- 
ical little mockery and travesty of a man — 
manikin, midget, baby in breeches — such and 
so great confusion come upon all impatient 
and evil-minded parents who are not content 



14 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

to wait the flower's slow unfolding, but will 
have the tiny and tender bud spring suddenly 
into the broad-bannered rose ! 

" Harry Midget, come hither and be recon- 
structed. What did you see at the circus 
yesterday ?" 

" A leffalent an' a baby leffalent !" 

" And where is Katrina gone ?" 

"Gone to Frank-an-cisco !" — pulling out for 
freedom. 

" Stop ! Tell me what is the Japanese em- 
bassador's name." 

" I — whack-xi-Ya, !" — tugging mightily away. 

" How much do you love me ? TJien you 
shall go." 

" Tm-dollar !" 

"That all?" 

"An'agol'lockit!" 

Bless the baby, with or without his " trouble- 
some disguises," which, after all, rather em- 
phasize than disguise his babyhood. 

But when you come to the other baby, the 



THE BABY IN BREECHES. 15 

case is pitiful. To think of Baby Harry ab- 
dicating in favor of this bit of scarcely an- 
imated nature ! Harry, all brightness and 
quickness and sturdy strength, all determina- 
tion and purpose, and eager liking and definite 
will — and this little lump of flesh and flannel, 
nothing but creases and folds and bulgings 
and f umblings — and a girl at that ! 

But Harry the Magnanimous knows no en- 
vyiugs nor jealousies. He cares not for crown 
and throne, admires his little sister with whole- 
souled enthusiasm, and shows her off to vis- 
itors as if she were a panorama and he the 
exhibitor. " Dat's her hair," rubbing up the 
golden haze that clouds her head. " See her 
eyes !'■' and he pokes his dimpled fingers into 
the staring, blinking orbs, under a firm con- 
viction that it is an entire novelty for babies 
to have eyes. 

They are strange creatures, these babies. 
You do not expect them to walk and talk, and 
turn out their toes and be generally decorous ; 



16 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

but it does seem as if they might know enough 
to keep their heads from dropping off their 
shoulders. They do not. True, I never knew 
a baby to jerk its head off, but no thanks to 
baby. From honorable, even Christian mo- 
tives, from a benevolent desire to evince your 
sympathy with the fond parent, you hold out 
your arms to receive the proffered infant. For 
an instant all goes well, but the next, without 
warning or provocation, down goes the head 
back over your arm with a jerk, as if the ver- 
tebrae were resolving themselves into their 
original lime and phosphorus. And then a 
baby is so voluminously dressed that you can 
never be sure you have clutched the real ar- 
ticle unless you take it by the neck, which 
hardly agrees with baby, though it is the fa- 
vorite mode of handling kittens. The trouble 
is, there is nothing human about a baby. It 
has no sympathy, no love, no hope nor fear. 
It sometimes contorts its face into a grimace 
which partial friends fondly call a smile, but 



THE BABY IN BREECHES. 17 

it is just as likely to be followed by a scream 
as to subside into sobriety, and it certainly 
looks as much like pain as pleasure. ISTo, there 
is no good in talking about it. The baby be- 
ing here, and being subject to cold and heat 
and hunger and thirst, must be warmed and 
fed and sheltered; but as to being interest- 
ing — as to comparing it with Harry ! 

But the wonder, the marvel, the miracle! 
Eastern jugglers show you a palm-tree burst- 
ing the soil, branching to the heavens, put- 
ting forth leaf and bud and fruit before your 
eyes; but a baby is more wonderful than the 
palm-tree. For the change has come, so 
subtile that your eye can not see it. Even 
while you were looking, even while you were 
reviling the little atom, it ceased to be an atom, 
and proved the truth of Professor Tyndall's 
theory that an atom contains within itself the 
promise and potency of every form of life. 
Imperceptibly, undetected, the microcosm put 
off its impersonality and stepped into the ranks 
B 



18 NUKSEKY NOONINGS. 

of humanity. The mite has found her soul. 
In her eye is recognition, in her smile expres- 
sion. How it came about none can tell : but 
yesterday she was isolated, and to-day she is 
linked with all the world. But yesterday she 
was an interloper, and to-day she is a constitu- 
ent part of the universe, with established and 
acknowledged rights. Oh, but now she strikes 
out gloriously into life, and puts her foes to 
shame ! No more aimless lopping heads for 
her, but a stretching and setting in all direc- 
tions whithersoever she would push her re- 
searches. Now for parents and nurses who 
shall be humble and meek in spirit, and will- 
ing to follow nature, and not set up theories 
founded on their own conceit ! We shall never 
cease to have the church broken up with dis- 
sensions between old school and new, the state 
fuming over tariff and tax, families torn with 
internal dissensions, until we bring up chil- 
dren logically. How can a man be logical 
when his parents were continually interposing 



THE BABY IN BREECHES. 19 

to make him illogical from his infancy? A 
child should be permitted to follow out his 
own conclusions. The adult world agrees that 
it is not polite to interrupt. The learned world 
understands that the sequence of thought is 
not to be lightly disturbed. Let us take our 
politeness and our philosophy into the baby 
world. The little sister is gazing steadfastly 
at the chair. Her blue eyes are fixed and bulg- 
ing. You will immediately begin to toss her 
and coo to her, distract her attention, and pre- 
vent her solution of the problem of the chair. 
So her mind loses the power of fixation, and 
by and by you will have au unreasonable and 
unreasoning woman on your hands. 

I, on the contrary, reverence her maiden 
meditations, hold my peace, and simply and 
silently watch her. Presently she stretches 
out her tiny hand. Nature is fumbling for 
the evidence of touch as well as sight. But 
she can not quite reach the chair. She leans 
forward. I obey nature and let her slip to- 



20 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

ward the chair. She feels it all over with the 
experimental hands. She applies to it her lit- 
tle toothless experimental mouth. Of course 
she drools somewhat on the silk cover, but it 
is far more important that a child should be 
brought up logically than that a chair should 
be kept unspotted. She evinces a desire to in- 
vestigate the lower part of the chair and the 
under part of the seat. Thoroughness, a dis- 
position to go to the root of the matter, con- 
tinuity of attention, are traits which can not 
be too highly valued or too fully cultivated. 
She leans out and strikes forward with a force 
that shifts her centre of gravity. Nature, as 
if for the very purpose of aiding her in the 
pursuit of knowledge, has made her utterly 
without fear> We adults should not dare to 
look over a corresponding precipice; but she, 
with blind faith in the unseen holding-back 
power of the universe, flings herself forward. 
I do not falsify her faith, but gather her long 
petticoats, for such case made and provided, 



THE BABY IN BREECHES. 21 

into my hand, and, holding her like a bag, 
let her descend head-first to look at the legs 
and rungs of the chair. Prejudiced and self- 
conceited adults make a great outcry, as if 
you were letting the baby down to perdition : 
but it is pure logic. I want her to continue 
her investigations so long as they have in- 
terest for her. You talk about her brains. 
Her brains are in her head, and turning her 
upside down is not going to take them out. 
Does not Nature know as much about her 
brains as you and I, and would she impel her 
downward, and keep her fumbling and stretch- 
ing and staring, if it were not a good thing to 
do ? Only be humble and not self-conceited, 
and baby will presently give a sign that she is 
through with that branch of the subject, and 
ready to come right side up with care. 

And up she comes, bright and satisfied, to 
give the lie to all your narrow-brain theories, 
and prepared to study the next subject with 
the attention which befits a reasonable being. 



22 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

And she has suddenly blossomed into beau- 
ty. There be who think she was always beau- 
tiful. " The baby is splendid !" said doting 
Partiality j while as yet no unprejudiced person 
could see anght but shapelessness and discolor- 
ation — a head sunk in shoulders, a pudgy, puffy 
wab. But the wab has unfolded like a flower. 
The stately head rises from the shapely shoul- 
ders, the yellow furze curls into silken hair. 
The nose asserts itself, the mouth unfolds and 
curves into Cupid's bow, the plump and per- 
fect arm, the dimpled, dainty hand, rise and 
reach with matchless grace, or lie folded in 
tender repose. She looks and listens : what 
spirit in the erect head, in the straight and 
supple neck ! what bold out-look in the eagle 
eyes ! what brilliancy of tint, what purity of 
texture ! It is a statue of breathing marble, 
but never was marble yet so fine and fair, nor 
is the inmost petal of the rose so soft. And all 
her whiteness is suffused with the bloom of 
life. She recognizes the voice that speaks, the 



THE BABY IN BEEECHES. 23 

face that gazes, and her pose breaks into move- 
ment. Leaps a sudden light into the eyes' un- 
fathomable blue. The tiny rose-bud face is 
shining all over with smiles. Legs and arms, 
and the whole lithe little body, are astir and 
aspring. It is the far-off hidden heart that 
as yet has uttered no word of love, but feels in 
its fastnesses the great throb of human sym- 
pathy, and darts out its swift and glad re- 
sponse. Nay, more than that, the shy little, 
sweet little, coy little woman — the Sleeping 
Beauty that a score of years will scarcely 
waken — breathes even now on the unconscious 
air, and Baby turns quickly away from the too 
fervid sunshine of your look, and buries her 
happy face in nurse's sheltering shoulder. 

The moral of both babies is this : we know 
very little about it. 

When I see the absolute ownership in and 
control of their children which some parents 
assume by virtue of their relationship, I mar- 
vel. The responsibility of a parent can not 



24 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

perhaps be exaggerated. This little boy who 
sits on the floor talking dreamily and dramat- 
ically to himself as he plays with his blocks 
may be warped and mined by parental blun- 
ders, may lose his life by parental neglect, or 
the sound mind in the sound body may be 
wisely guided to its greatest possibilities. But 
no parental design can determine what those 
possibilities shall be. It remains for observa- 
tion to discover them. Herein lies the mis- 
take of many : they will determine rather than 
discover. They wish their boy to be a minis- 
ter, like his fathers before him, and they shape 
all his training to that end. But the boy does 
not want to be a minister. He wants to be a 
sailor. The blood of some old sea-king, dead 
for generations, reddens anew in his veins, and 
impels him irresistibly. Why it lay dormant 
so long, what influences quickened it to life in 
him, none can say. But the fact must be no- 
ted and respected, or disaster will ensue. This 
round-eyed baby, all dependent now on others, 



THE BABY IN BREECHES. 25 

is yet as distinct an individual as the emperor 
on his throne. What traits he has selected 
from his numerous ancestors doth not yet ap- 
pear ; but the selection is already made. The 
parental part is wisely to cultivate what exists, 
not ignore or repress it and cultivate what 
the father wishes were there instead. The pa- 
rental part is to stand in awe before that mys- 
terious and fearful thing, a human being. In 
youth, in maturity, in old age, it is still fearful ; 
but time has incrusted the soul, has developed 
somewhat its powers, has given it expression 
and self-direction, has made its features famil- 
iar to our eyes. The new soul comes fresh 
from the unknown, itself all unknown. This 
waxen-faced creature, with the rounded limbs, 
the flaxen hair, the cooing voice, has been six 
months in this rushing, tumultuous world, and 
has never told us what she thinks of it. The 
lips of him a thousand years dead are not 
more securely sealed than hers. 

When little Harry lay tossed and tortured 



26 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

by cruel disease, whither fled in dismay his 
bright and eager mind ? Where behind the 
dim and faded eyes lay the forces of thought 
and feeling ? Locked in what evil spell Ian 
guished the isolated soul ? Torpid in heavy 
sleep through the early night, the midnight 
clock did not more surely strike than the de- 
mon of unrest came in upon him from the 
wide outer universe, and drove him through 
the slow, pitiless hours. What subtile sym- 
pathy linked this atom with the stars in their 
courses 1 What finest cosmic ether penetrates 
all space, and thrills both soul and substance ? 
Is mind, then, only refined matter ? Are we 
in very deed children of the clod ? 

" Mamma ! mamma !" cries Harry, his great 
eyes clouded, his brow wrinkled with displeas- 
ure, his whole face set against outrage — "Mam- 
ma, are I sparkin' the girls ? I want to go 
play with Bessie Mannin', and Ann say I 
sparkin' the girls !" 

" Sparkin' the girls " is evidently some mi- 



THE BABY IN BEEECHES. 27 

desirable unknown quantity to this future man, 
whose boyhood is as yet only evolving itself 
from babyhood. The baby in him goes about 
sucking the other baby's bottle with great de- 
light, while the nascent boy is equally and 
simultaneously delighted to stride the yard- 
stick, which he picturesquely dubs his " strad- 
dle-horse." Nursing-bottle in one hand, equine 
yard- stick in the other, he walks along the 
parting of two ways, holding the winsome 
graces of both. Not yet has fallen from him 
the awful innocence of infancy ; but all his 
blood bounds with the strength and energy of 
masculine vigor. When a new crying-doll is 
put into the tiny hands of the little sister, the 
boy - baby also goes moaning about for " a 
squeak -thing," and no nomenclature of his 
maturity could more happily hit off the clum- 
sy directness of the male mind than this name 
he gives to the gutta-percha toy. 

And the little lady who sits throned amid 
her pillows on the bed, and who, in spite of 



28 NUKSEBY NOONINGS. 

pillows, lunges now this way and now that in 
slow, vague, vain pursuit of the " squeak- thing" 
that is ever falling from her fumbling fingers 
— this little lady approves as unquestionably 
her right to belong to the oppressed sex. Small 
notice gets she from the other, though when 
she is actually thrust into a man's face, he will 
look up and say, " Ah ! pretty little girlie !" 
and become immediately absorbed in his book. 
When, an hour after, she puts on some irresist- 
ible new attraction, and he is implored to 
" look at the little sister," he responds, abstract- 
edly, " Yes, I did," as if he had given a note 
of hand to take account of stock in her once a 
day, and had kept his bond. For this stoical 
and monstrous indifference does the little girl 
show any resentment ? Does she, as the very 
least of her duty, deny acquaintance with this 
unnatural parent, and stare or shriek her spre- 
tee injuria formmf Spiritless, abject, and 
servile specimen of her abject and servile sex ! 
Born to be neglected and slighted, because she 



THE BABY IN BBEECHES. 29 

permits slights ! Eot she ! Whenever the 
Grim Grendal enters the room this miserable 
little damsel, doomed to be despoiled, pockets 
all her slights, cranes her lovely neck, follows 
the tyrant man with eager, delighted eyes, puts 
forth all her witchery to wile him into notic- 
ing her, and if my lord deign to hold out his 
golden sceptre, all her face grows radiant with 
smiles, and body and soul leap with ecstasy. 
Silly little minx ! to go into raptures over an 
indifferent wooer ! Stupid little Madchen ! 
if only you would stand on your dignity, how 
would jow bring all the world to your feet ! 
More than now ? Ah ! that I know not ! 

"Bright as the sun your eyes the gazers strike, 
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike." 

But is it any harm to the sun that he shines 
on all alike % Has he any the less light left 
in his heaven of heavens ? Is it not rather his 
glory and unutterable joy that he shines and 
shines out of his own heart, not heeding re- 



30 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

turns, but flooding the wandering worlds with 
warmth and beauty and color and life because 
it is his nature and happiness to give ? 

Or does my little lady of the starry eyes 
feel blindly somehow in her ignorant heart 
that she was a fifth wheel in this coach, and 
must justify her existence by rolling smoothly, 
since there was no real need of her rolling at 
all ? Truly she is wise in her generation, for 
Mai thus himself could not find it in his heart 
to remand her to the blank eternities. All she 
asks is a little food, a little bed, and she flow- 
ers to the light, and folds at night the purest 
lily that ever soared on slender stalk to greet 
the gracious day. Who shall grudge her the 
joy of living, when she herself is a living joy ? 
But woe is me for the unhappy babies whose 
life is a succession of wails ! Wrong — all 
wrong. Babies no more ought to cry than 
grown people. Yet you will hear it said of 
such and such a baby that "the first three 
months of its life it cried all the time," as if 



THE BABY IN BREECHES. 31 

you should say it had blue eyes. A baby cries 
because it is unhappy. The natural condition 
of life is happiness. They start out in life — 
when they start properly — with an immense 
surplus capital of contentment. A baby I 
wot of has been known to wear a needle 
sticking into her all day and never wince. I 
do not suppose she knew it was a needle. I 
suppose she thought it was the natural feeling 
to have when you are five months old. But, 
at any rate, she felt that life was too short and 
sweet to sacrifice serenity to a needle. So she 
smiled and smiled. Cry-babies indeed ! It is 
some ancestral sin or folly or ignorance that 
clouds the sunshine of life's morning hour. 

But it is the little sister's evening hour. 
Soft as the petals of the apple blossoms, one 
by one fall the gossamer garments, till the 
baby sits clothed in her beauty, naked and 
unashamed. Oh, but then how she frisks 
and curvets and coos ! The caressing air, the 
boundless freedom, set all her nerves a-tingle. 



32 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

Then how sweet to her seem her tiny toes, if 
only she could get at them ! What vigorous 
dives she makes at hair and neckties and ev- 
ery thing within or without her reach ! And 
presently, while she bounds and frolics, over- 
flowing with the joy of life, we are aware that 
the window is darkened, and, lo ! four little 
boy-faces pressing against the pane and gazing 
in with wide eyes of wonder and admiration 
at the minute morsel tossed aloft in a giant's 
stalwart arms. 

And the minute morsel leaps and coos and 
crows and kicks with undisguised and undi- 
minished exultation till cambric and sleep de- 
scend upon her, and all the darkened world 
curtains her repose. 



DEAD LEAVES. 33 



II. 

DEAD LEAVES. 



The " Lady-Bird " is a very charming peri- 
odical, published, edited, written, wholly, I sup- 
pose, by women, and is a creditable exhibition 
of what women can do when they set about it. 
But the charm of the Lady-Bird is not in the 
tinkling ornaments about its feet, in its change- 
able suits of apparel, and its mantles, and its 
wimples, and its crisping-pins ; but in the fine 
little feminine head that rises so stately, poised 
with serene good sense, in the midst of a crook- 
ed and perverse generation. 

The Lady-Bird sang a pleasant song one day 
over the little ones rolling along the streets in 
their fine little wagons, but it stopped not quite 
soon enough for wisdom. When its love-song 
sank into the minor key of wailing, and it af- 
firmed that " the childless must be aware that 
C 



34 NUESEKY NOONINGS. 

they drop out of the world like dead leaves, 
that they send no strength or vitality onward 
to the future ; they have no bond with it, no 
part in it, no right or room in the great and 
perfect race which one day shall blossom out 
of this ; they fall by the way, and are no more" 
— then the Lady -Bird spake as one of the fool- 
ish men speaketh, and I who love rebuke and 
chasten. 

Even botany weighed in the balance is found 
wanting, which should be a solemn warning 
never again to deviate from the path of recti- 
tude. The dead leaves, invoked, rise up from 
their graves to bear swift witness against er- 
ror. " Dead leaves," they murmur, shivering, 
shriveled on the apple-trees, massed in rustling 
heaps under the maples, where the wild winds 
have swept them — " dead, indeed, dead as Mor- 
ley, dead as a door-nail now ; but have we in- 
deed sent no strength or vitality onward to the 
future % Have we no right nor part in the 
great and perfect race of Baldwins and Astra- 



DEAD LEAVES. 35 

khans and Gravensteins that lie in jour bins, 
to gather presently around your fireside and 
minister at your family feasts ? Dead leaves 
as we are, we can tell you better than that. 
Woman's paper as you are, you ought to know 
better than that. The great and perfect race, 
if it ever come, must come by our leading. It 
is from us that the future gathered its strength 
and vitality. Without us it would have been 
deader than we are now ; for it would have 
been, like Morley, dead to begin with, whereas 
we are only dead at the end. It is through us 
that the fruit, the future, lives and breathes 
and has its being. 

And if you attempt to gainsay them, my 
Lady -Bird, Wood and Grey will put yon 
down with a strong hand. The dead leaves 
are right, and the living leaf is wrong. 

Wrong, after the maimer of men. It is 
only when you forsake your own womanly 
wisdom, and follow after false gods, that you 
go astray. A paper that must be a great deal 



36 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

wiser than you, because it is a man's paper, 
and you are only a woman's paper ; that must 
be a great deal better than you, because it is a 
religious paper, and you are only a worldly 
paper ; this great and good journal said, once 
upon a time, speaking like you of the child- 
less : " It is almost throwing away life, leaving 
none to cheer you through life, comfort you in 
old age, imitate and mourn you when dead . . . 
leaving the world no larger or better, and no 
influence to be handed down to the future." 

Which is precisely your doctrine, dear Lady- 
Bird ; but do not yet exult. 

In another column the same paper says: 
" Gr. P. will sail for England about the first of 
May, bearing with him the gratitude of a na- 
tion. He has caused his name to be ever re- 
membered, and his benefactions have a scope 
that will render them blessings to the end of 
time." 

But Gr. P. had never wife nor child, and his 
benefactions consisted solely of money. 



DEAD LEAVES. 37 

The self- same copy of the self -same paper 
elsewhere announces that Miss S. S. has given 
twenty thousand dollars to Andover Theolog- 
ical Seminary ; and " who," inquires the paper, 
in a gush of eloquent gratitude — "who can cal- 
culate its benign influence on the whole Chris- 
tian Church and the world % Miss S. will by 
this benefaction be doing good as long as time 
shall last. Not only will thousands of holy 
men, who in the lapse of time will receive 
the education which this donation will furnish, 
bless her name and keep fresh her memory; 
but thousands of communities will be favored 
with the refining and educating, the gladden- 
ing and saving influences of the Gospel in 
their midst, and thousands on thousands of 
immortal souls will, we trust, be crowned with 
the bliss of heaven as the fruit of it." 

All that for twenty thousand dollars ! What 
more could a living leaf do ? 

In the same paper we are told that " a re- 
markable Christian has just fallen in death, 



38 NTJESERY NOONINGS. 

named E. B,., a member of the Congregation- 
al Church in Arcadia. He was an independent 
farmer, plain and unassuming, but thoroughly 
consistent in his life, ready for every good 
work, and liberal in his pecuniary contribu- 
tions for benevolent objects far beyond the 
ordinary standard. He had no children, and 
his wife was like-minded with himself. For 
several years they have given away their whole 
income beyond their necessary frugal support, 
the amount of their contributions being some- 
times one thousand dollars per annum. He 
was seventy years of age at his death ; and up 
to the day on which he was taken sick he 
worked industriously, and sought to acquire 
money as eagerly as any miser, but only for 
the purpose of bestowing it in chanty. At 
his death he, by will, left all he had to his 
wife, with the proviso that what remained at 
her death should be devoted in equal propor- 
tions to the American Board, the American 
Home Missionary Society, the American Mis- 



DEAD LEAVES. 39 

sionaiy Association, and the education of 
young men for the ministry. . . . The societies 
will probably realize several thousand dollars 
each. His case illustrates strikingly the great 
amount of good a plain and unostentatious, 
though earnest and consistent Christian can 
do. His influence was mighty." 

All Lady-Birds can see how unsafe it is to 
teach for doctrine the commandments of men. 
One can never tell where is the end of that 
hunting. If one will follow this creed, he 
must add another clause. He who would bind 
himself to the future must do it through his 
children; or, add the Tetzels who have not 
yet met their Luther, he must give a certain 
sum of money — twenty thousand dollars at the 
close of life will suffice ; whether a less sum 
would answer, or whether discount would be 
offered at an earlier period, does not appear — 
to a theological seminary; or, if he can not 
give twenty thousand in a lump, he may com- 
pound on his whole income for a series of 



40 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

years — except Ms necessary frugal expenses. 
Mark, they must be frugal. Thus says religion. 
Why should the world be more strenuous ? 

A young woman was brought up with a 
brother, between whom and herself existed 
a peculiar and profound attachment. She 
kept house for him until he was married ; but 
then, finding her occupation gone, she became 
restless and uneasy. He observed it, inquired 
the cause, and asked her what sort of life she 
really would like. She replied that she would 
like to have a large house under her own con- 
trol, and to gather into it as many outcast or 
neglected children as it would hold, and take 
care of them. He came home at night, told 
her the house was ready, and that she might 
collect her vagabonds as soon as she chose. 
She was as good as her word. She went out 
into the highways and hedges, and brought in 
the little wretches. Family after family she 
gathered around her ; and many, perhaps scores, 
of children were rescued by her from degra- 



DEAD LEAVES. 41 

elation and crime, and reared to happiness and 
honor. 

Who will say that that woman sent no 
strength or vitality onward to the future, and 
had no part nor right nor room in it ? 

The very essence of motherhood was there, 
the spirit and soul of all womanly character. 
It is impossible accurately to compute the re- 
sults of moral causes, yet, so far as it is pos- 
sible to judge, that woman sent more vitality 
into the future, had a stronger hold upon it 
and a greater right in it, than half a dozen 
selfish or shallow mothers. That the children 
were not her own only strengthens her claim 
upon the gratitude of the great and perfect 
race which is to come. The mother simply 
discharges a duty which she creates. She 
does that which she would be inhuman, a 
monster, not to do. This woman took upon 
herself the work which of right belonged to 
others. She burdened herself with evils for 
which she was not even remotely responsible. 



42 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

She doubly aided the state; not simply by 
adding to its number of virtuous and intelli- 
gent citizens, but by creating virtue and intel- 
ligence out of crime and ignorance. That 
which was fatal disease she converted into 
vital force. Out of the strong she brought 
forth sweetness. 

Will any one dare to stand up and affirm 
that she will drop out of the world like a 
dead leaf, that she will send no strength nor 
vitality onward to the future, and has no right 
nor room in it ? 

The world has heard of Mary Lyon. We 
know with what earnestness, with what enthu - 
siasm, with what fidelity she devoted her whole 
life to the education of other people's chil- 
dren. She made her living by it indeed ; but 
such was the zeal, such the fervor which she 
threw into her work, that it seemed not so 
much a profession as a consecration. She was 
only one of a class who, with less enthusiasm, 
perhaps, but with equal fidelity, occupy them- 



DEAD LEAVES. 43 

selves with the training of the young. They 
have often no children of their own ; but the 
influence which they exercise upon the chil- 
dren of others — it is, perhaps, not too much 
to say — is unbounded. It is certainly incal- 
culable. It carries forward the work begun 
in good homes ; and in thousands of cases it 
helps to counteract the evils and to supply the 
deficiences of bad ones. There are men and 
women the world over who trace back to wise 
and competent teachers those formative prin- 
ciples which have moulded their lives to sym- 
metry and success. 

And we gaze at them open-eyed, and assure 
them that those teachers sent no strength nor 
vitality onward to the future, and have no 
right to any share in its excellence. 

Or, to look at it in another light, is it 
through their children that parents always get 
their strongest hold upon the future? Is it 
Milton's poetry and essays or Milton's daugh- 
ters that have borne his strength onward to 



44 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

our own time? Is it Shakespeare's plays or 
Shakespeare's Susanna that gives him his place 
in the world of to-day ? Is it Madame D'Ar- 
blay's book or Madame D'Arblay's boy, is it 
Scott's novels or Sir Walter's heir that con- 
stitutes the bond between the past and the 
present ? George Washington and St. Paul 
dropped out of the world like dead leaves, and 
the glory of a man is not in the grandeur of 
his life, the wholesomeness of his example, but 
in the fact that he leaves a family of children ! 
O Lady - Bird, you are a hypocrite ; and 
they that say the same are like unto you; 
and so is every one that trusteth in you. You 
know quite well that what you honor is in- 
tegrity, purity, humanity, reverence, unselfish- 
ness. He who meets the duties of life, who is 
honorable, high-minded, public-spirited, who is 
considerate, careful, kind at home, faithful, 
charitable, comprehensive abroad, loyal and up- 
right every where — he is the man who serves 
his country best, and deserves well of the f ut- 



DEAD LEAVES. 45 

ure, whether his children praise him in the 
gates, or whether, like one we wot of, God 
make him childless that a nation may call 
him Father. 

The leaf that is green and fresh and shape- 
ly, that breathes in life for the bud and fur- 
thers the perfect tree — that is a living leaf, 
and in its royal present enfolds the royal f ut- 
ure. It has no quarrel with the rounded and 
ripening fruit, but lends itself with ardor to 
the development of the life from which both 
sprang, and to whose continuance and symme- 
try both must perforce give help or hinderance. 
But when some amateur orchardist goes by, 
and would approve his wisdom by speaking 
evil of its dignity, it may, perhaps, be pardon- 
ed for glancing somewhat disdainfully around 
upon the knobby, knurly fruit, the many sour, 
dwarfed, misshapen, worm-eaten apples, and 
querying whether his science may not be bet- 
ter applied to improving the quality of the 
crop than decrying the mission of the leaf. 



46 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

The leafs death is in accord with its life. It 
dies because its work is done — its vital and 
divine work. It has softened the splendor of 
blossom and sheltered and nourished the grow- 
ing fruit. Its service is over ; for a little season 
it flames into a brilliancy all its own, and then 
floats gently down to rest and resurrection. 
Never. was man or woman born who might 
not be glad to drop out of the world as drops 
the dead leaf — its mission perfectly accom- 
plished, its influence never to be defined. 

And though we, or an angel from heaven, 
preach any other gospel unto you, let him be 
accursed. 

Yet another gospel is so strenuously preach- 
ed that we should not be surprised if its echoes 
penetrate where truer notes are expected. 
There are prophets of a new dispensation who 
teach that the strength of a nation as of a 
family consists not in quality but in quantity. 

Whenever there is a lull of the elements ; 
whenever war, famine, fraud, freshet, drought, 



DEAD LEAVES. 47 

pestilence, explosion, collision, and tempest 
subside enough to leave us a brief repose, 
some medical, clerical, or otherwise statistical 
marplot is sure to appear on the scene and 
spoil our peace by affirming that the native 
American is passing away. It is not enough 
that we are breaking our hearts over his death 
by field and flood, but we must break them 
into still smaller fragments over the fact that 
he is not born. There are persons who hold 
this in reserve when all other sorrows fail 
them; and there are patriots whose whole 
stock in trade consists of vital statistics, and 
the bewailings thereunto appertaining. Their 
literary preparation seems to be in walking 
about the streets counting the children; and 
when they have ascertained that the large fam- 
ilies are of Irish descent, and that the native 
Americans average only three and a half to a 
family, they are happy. Then is our Amer- 
ican race swiftly dismissed to annihilation ; 
then is our continent incontinently deluged 



48 



NURSEBY NOONINGS, 



with Irish blood ; then is the Bible brandish- 
ed over us like a scourge of small cords ; then 
cometh our fear as desolation, and our de- 
struction as a whirlwind. 

" The Bible every where," says one of these 
Cassandrian prophets, " holds up the thought 
that a great family is a special blessing." If 
special, perhaps it is idle to expect that it 
should be general ; but if our vital statistician 
would take his horse and chaise, and drive 
around to the great families of the Bible, he 
would have reason to blow his melancholy 
blast as long and loud among the hills of Ju- 
dea as in the valleys of New England. The 
laws and customs of marriage among the Jews, 
considered from our point of sight, were de- 
graded and disgusting. It was' not dishonor- 
able for a man to transfer his daughter to a 
husband without regard to her wishes or feel- 
ings. A man might have as many wives as he 
chose ; and any or all of them he could dis- 
card at will, with no restraint except that he 



DEAD LEAVES. 49 

should give to the discarded wife a certificate 
of the fact, a bill of divorcement — a liberty 
prized so highly down even to the time of 
Christ that, when he would enforce the perma- 
nence of the marriage relation, men revolted 
against marriage. They would not be married 
at all if they must be married so strenuously ! 
" If the case of the man be so witli his wife, it 
is not good to marry." What characters are 
nurtured under such laws and in such society 
may easily be inferred ; and may, indeed, be 
read any where in the Old Testament. Doubt- 
less the Mosaic code was exactly and admira- 
bly adapted to the education of the Jew, as he 
existed when that code was promulgated ; but 
to hold up the laws given to him as the rule 
of our faith and practice, to hold up the ambi- 
tions and aspirations of women reared under 
such a dispensation as a model for our Ameri- 
can women, is a measure not likely to increase 
our respect for the vital statistician. 

But even his count is questionable. Three 
D 



50 NURSEKY NOONINGS. 

and a half children to a family is the burden 
of his lamentations. The American mother 
" leading round a solitary, lonely child " is his 
bete noir. Yet, after all, this degenerate Amer- 
ican mother is not a black swan among the 
races. I am not sure that even the Hebrew 
mother would bear away the palm from her. 
Eve began the peopling of the w T orld wuth an 
indefinite number of sons and daughters ; but 
she was nearly a hundred and thirty years old 
before her third child was born, and if she 
lived in the present generation of Americans, 
she would fall far below the average admitted 
by our weeping philosopher. Sarah is the next 
woman of whom we have any minute account, 
and her Heraclitus would have seen doing 
what he particularly stigmatizes — " leading 
round a solitary, lonely child ;" and he would 
have had to wait ninety years to see her do 
even so much as that. Eebekah and Rachel 
would mount but a step higher in his estima- 
tion, being each the mother of only two chil- 



DEAD LEAVES. 51 

dren. Jacob's family does, indeed, figure large- 
ly in the sacred records; but the twelve sons 
and one daughter, divided among the four 
women who were their mothers, gives only an 
average of three and one fourth to each, while 
the admitted average of New England fam- 
ilies is three and a fraction. Adah was the 
mother of one child, Aholibamah of three, 
Bashemath of one, Asenath of two, Jochebed 
of three, Zipporah of two, Naomi of two, Elish- 
eba of four. There seems to be no record of 
Deborah's children. Probably she had none, 
and if she had they were of no account. All 
we know of her husband he owes to his wife. 
Ruth had one child, Hannah six. Michal, we 
are expressly told, had no child unto the day 
of her death. Considering the small number 
of women whose names and histories are re- 
corded in the Bible, the testimony is over- 
whelmingly in favor of small families. It 
must be admitted either that they represent 
the race, and that the Hebrew mothers gener- 



52 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

ally had small families ; or, if they do not rep- 
resent the race, that the most prominent, dis- 
tinguished, and advanced women among the 
Hebrews had but few if any children. The 
women here called to account average only 
two and a small fraction, to the three and a 
larger fraction of the New England mothers. 
The effect of concentrating the ability, the af- 
fection, and the care of the mother on two 
children, rather than dispersing it over a large 
number, seems to have been most happy. The 
Jewish race is so signally as to be considered 
even miraculously endowed with vitality. Its 
imperishable vigor is seen in the fact that 
scarcely any art or science, any form of skill 
or sagacity or enterprise, but has had, and I 
might almost say has to-day, a Jew at its head. 
Even the masses of the Jews have ever wrest- 
ed prosperity from adversity, and lived in the 
forefront of death. 

To sum up the whole matter, we should say 
that the Bible teaches that among the Hebrew 



DEAD LEAVES. 53 

women children were a "special blessing," 
few in number, eagerly and passionately de- 
sired. As a result, we have a race of insur- 
mountable strength, existing, increasing, flour- 
ishing in the face of every obstacle. Our an- 
cestors, according to the vital statistician, had 
large families — twice and thrice and four times 
as large as the Jewish mothers ; and, as a re- 
sult, we are already, in the second and third 
generations, rapidly dwindling and deteriorat- 
ing. 

So, then, the vital statistician is not wrong 
in blowing his warning blast ; only he ought 
to reverse his trumpet, and blow according to 
the law and the testimony, until the average 
American family is reduced to the Scriptural 
standard. 

The sufferings of the census-takers it is not 
necessary to attempt to assuage. There is a 
large class, not quite discontented, yet not 
wholly content, to whom one would gladly 
administer tranquillity. The great number, of 



54 NURSEEY NOONINGS. 

women, old and young, who send articles to 
the newspapers and magazines, is rather a 
theme for badinage and slightly contemptuous 
comment ; yet it has its pathetic side. Some 
are but fanciful and ambitious girls, who have 
just left school, and wish to win fame. Some 
simply have no especial ability for any occu- 
pation, and are attracted by the results of suc- 
cessful writing. Others, unhappy, turn to lit- 
erature because they must do something and 
can do nothing. Others wish to lighten the 
sorrows of the world and to do good. Many 
have apparently a real ability, but family cares 
interpose. The girl's early aspirations never 
die, and once in a while some story or poem 
breaks forth so good as to make her a little 
dissatisfied that she can do no more and no 
better. These latter women are clever, of ac- 
tive mind, of quick perception, of ready wit, 
who could do well a great many things, but 
who are confined to the one occupation of do- 
mestic life. The drudgery and routine weary 



DEAD LEAVES. 55 

tliem. They long to escape to calm regions, 
to nervous tranquillity and mental exhilara- 
tion. The j are appreciative readers, intelli- 
gent mothers, capable women ; but they are 
not without an occasional pang at the thought 
of what they might have accomplished in oth- 
er ways and walks. 

I shall not be suspected of exalting the do- 
mestic above every other career. There are 
those who have no vocation for what is com- 
monly understood as the family life. The 
commonplace routine of housekeeping over- 
powers, for them, its pleasant possibilities. 
There are, besides these, a great host of women 
who, whatever may be their tastes and capa- 
bilities, yet feel it best to remain outside the 
family circle. To all such, business, art, liter- 
ature, lie open. They are unembarrassed, free 
to follow any career. They should not only 
be countenanced, but encouraged. Independ- 
ence, ease, fame, honor, are all within their 
grasp, and are the lawful guerdon of their 



56 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

struggle. Nothing less than the highest should 
be their aim, and no sacrifice should be count- 
ed too great in its pursuit. 

But I wish I could persuade the women who 
are enlisted in another army, that they, too, 
fight under no contemptible flag. It is not 
simply that the mothers of busy, growing fam- 
ilies have not time to take the necessary steps 
for becoming famous. Even had they the 
time, the chances are very much against their 
success. If a man or woman, impelled by 
genius ? write an- immortal poem, that is the 
world's gain. But if you calculate chances, 
they are just as many that a woman will ac- 
quire fame through her children as through 
her writings. It is true that, having devoted 
all her energies to bringing up her family, it 
will be found in the end that they are but 
respectable, commonplace men and women. 
But also, if she had written a book, it would 
very likely have been but a respectable, com- 
monplace book — a book no more remarkable 
among books than her man among; men. 



DEAD LEAVES. 57 

No woman should think of being a writer 
unless she is willing and able to give her life 
to it ; to give, let us say, for definiteness, as 
much time, money, devotion, as the clergyman, 
the doctor, the lawyer gives to preparation for 
his profession. A woman may write a poem 
for her own pleasure, may send a letter to a 
newspaper, just as she may mix a medicine or 
preach to her Sunday-school class. But before 
she asks opinion as to whether she have suffi- 
cient mental power to be a writer, let her ask 
herself whether she have sufficient circumstan- 
tial freedom. It is the old theological ques- 
tion of moral and natural ability. Literature 
is fascinating, and its perquisites delightful ; 
but it is also exacting, imperious, inexorable. 
The writer is stimulated by recognition, but he 
does not beforehand weigh his work in the 
scale with recognition. If he think of fame 
and money and doing good, he is moved from 
without, not from within. He is thinking of 
the recompense ; he is not inspired with his 



58 NUESERY NOONINGS. 

work. He is thinking of what is to come from 
the world to him, not fashioning what is to go 
out from himself to the world. The true 
writer thinks of none of these things. He 
simply writes. Somewhat in him craves ex- 
pression. He does not balance probabilities. 
He does not stipulate for certainties. He is 
troubled by no fears of friendly disappoint- 
ment. He does not consult friends. Whoever 
reasons, is lost. The world is so full of good 
writing that the argument is wholly against 
writing any more. But instinct, the inward 
prompting, is stronger than reason. The writer 
born thinks of nothing outside, but is impelled 
from within. He broods in secret. He con- 
ceals his work. He averts suspicion. He does 
not resolve to study. He studies because he 
craves knowledge as the flower craves light. 
His writing is like that flower's unfolding. It 
is a result, not a means. It is a development, 
not a determination. He never questioned 
what he should make of himself; but before 



DEAD LEAVES. 59 

consciousness dawned upon him or ever the 
world was aware, suddenly his thought, his 
dream, his fancy burst into blossom. Then 
fame found him, and money flowed in upon 
him, and friends rejoiced over him. But of 
all bud and bloom and fruitage, its seed is in 
itself. 

Suppose, now, the clever but full -handed 
house -mother might become an interesting 
writer, how shall she set about it? She is, 
by her own confession, so absorbed in family 
cares that she has no more leisure time than 
she needs for her owm recreation. These fam- 
ily cares she does not propose — as it is doubt- 
less impossible for her — to relinquish. Her 
literary acquisitions and practice must come, 
in addition to duties which already fully oc- 
cupy her life. Would not one say that the 
burden was too great ; that the attempt to 
conquer two different and difficult kingdoms 
would endanger health, peace, and happiness ; 
and that, after all, she would have written 



60 NTTRSEKY NOONINGS. 

nothing better than already exists, even in our 
accessible English literature ? 

Why not choose an easier path ? Suppose 
that, when her daily tasks are over, she turn 
to reading, instead of writing. Her weary 
mind is stimulated, but not spurred. She is 
brought at once into close and confidential 
communication with the world's best intellects. 
She is furnished with information. She is lift- 
ed above the plane of every-day life. Imag- 
ination and taste are cultivated; and, for the 
exercise of her formative power, she has al- 
ways her family and her friends. The fan- 
cies, dreams, theories, convictions, to which she 
would gladly give voice through her pen, may 
find voice through her lips. Writing a book, 
painting a picture, bringing up a child, are 
only different ways of doing the same thing. 
In all of them we are influencing mind, shap- 
ing character. There be shallow philosophers, 
superficial observers, who would have the world 
believe that women are womanly only when 



DEAD LEAVES. 61 

they are literally taking care of children. Let 
us not therefore fall into the opposite error of 
supposing that they can rise to their loftiest 
intellectual heights only by writing. There is 
a great deal of mechanical in literary work. 
There is a great deal of mental in domestic 
work. The best writers do not depend solely 
upon the fires of heaven to forge their metal, 
but hammer and chisel and polish like any 
blacksmith. The finest mother looks not after 
mush and milk and shoes and stockings alone, 
but takes all knowledge to be her province, 
and makes her children princes and princesses 
therein. Just as we would counsel the wom- 
an who has chosen art, science, or literature, 
never to vex herself because she can not com- 
bine with it the intricate home career ; so 
would we counsel those who have chosen the 
home, not to be disturbed because the toils and 
rewards of other lives are not theirs. We can 
not all do every thing. Theirs is certainly not 
the least honorable, the least absorbing, nor 



62 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

the least satisfactory choice ; and having made 
it, they should not only be content, but eager 
to make all things subordinate to it. She who 
writes a book, touches many minds. She who 
rears a child, moulds one. But the many minds 
are only touched ; the one mind is moulded. 
The influence which the two women exert may 
be equal in quantity and dignity. They are 
different only in the forms of administration. 
The author diffuses ; the mother concentrates. 
The book and the baby preach one gospel — 
that the only work of vital and lasting impor- 
tance is the fashioning of human character. 
In the court of last resort, all work is worthy 
or worthless according as it bears on the wel- 
fare of the race ; and in this work the mother 
may find scope for every faculty, and gratifi- 
cation for all pride. 



BRINGING UP PARENTS. 63 



III. 

BRINGING UP PARENTS. 

As between children and grown people, it is 
the grown people that need training. 

When Archie began to go to school he was 
a good boy. He had his teasings and his tem- 
pers ; but his conscience was alert, his sensibil- 
ity acute, his delicacy unimpaired. The slight- 
est touch of ridicule, or even .an unexpected 
notice of him, would stain his tiny cheek with 
an exquisite blush. So he went to school, 
the little virgin soul ; full of keen expectation. 
What next? Why next Archie was getting 
discredits ; Archie was having his ears pulled 
and boxed ; Archie was being shaken and 
pinched and punished in small ways till he 
had ceased to care for it. He was not merely 
indifferent to the pain, which was trifling, but 
he had lost his sense of the shame of it, which 



64 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

was only not murder. Now I maintain that 
all the sin which Archie ever committed since 
he was born was not equal to his teacher's 
sin in thus rudely and ruthlessly brushing the 
bloom from his little heart. If any one were 
to be pinched and pulled and shaken, it was 
she, not he. Archie was taken away, before 
virtue was quite gone out of him, and sent to 
another teacher. Here his wasted gardens be- 
gan to put forth blossoms again. One clay the 
children ran in to the teacher, crying that 
Archie had said a wicked word. " No," she 
said, " I think not. Archie is a good boy." 
But after school she took him on her lap, 
and shone upon him till the little flower-soul 
softly opened itself and revealed that he had 
" said it was a damn hot day, but he heard a 
boy in Chestnut Street say it ;" and in the 
same virtue by which he learned his letters he 
spoke his wicked word. So he was soothed 
and taught and dismissed, and not demoral- 
ized. 



BEINGING UP PAKENTS. 65 

Children, according to my observation, are 
usually good, except so far as they are tam- 
pered with by their elders. They come into 
the world without any fixed bad habits, and 
we immediately turn to and fasten our own 
bad habits upon them, and call it family gov- 
ernment. And pretty work we make of it. 
Family government is a good thing, but it 
ought to be exercised largely on the fathers 
and mothers. Conscientious parents grow se- 
rious over the weight of responsibility resting 
upon them, lament their ignorance of the best 
way to bring up children, and talk much of 
ruies and system. But the best system in the 
world for children is to let them alone. The 
most rational, as well as the most righteous, 
resolve a parent can make over the new-born 
soul is the resolve of Moses at the burning 
bush : " I wdll now turn aside and see this 
great sight. 5 ' On the contrary, he seems too 
often rather to pursue Nebuchadnezzar's line 
of reflection : Is not this great Babylon that 
E 



66 NUKSEEY NOONINGS. 

I have built % Is not this little Baby that I 
have created by the might of my power and 
for the honor of my majesty % No, it is not. 
Every child is the child of man as truly as if 
there were no God, but he is also the child of 
God as truly as if there were no man. Behold, 
all souls are mine : as the soul of the father, so 
also the soul of the son is mine, saith the Lord. 
You have taken the responsibility of summon- 
ing him to life, and you therefore owe him 
every thing which he needs. By your duty 
and your love to him he is yours, and by no 
other bond. He belongs to himself. lie is an 
independent being. His life is no more to be 
bent to your ends, his tastes and talents are no 
more to be moulded to the honor of your maj- 
esty, than if he were born on another planet. 
You have absolutely no right over him, except 
such as is created by your obligation toward 
him. What that is can be determined not by 
preconceived system, but by close and loving 
observation of each individual case. 



BRINGING UP PARENTS. 67 

The only organic difference between chil- 
dren and grown-up people is that children are 
not grown np. Yet we often act as if they 
were another order of being, not amenable to 
the same laws as ourselves. On the contrary, 
they are precisely like us. They are open to 
reason just as we are, only rather more so. 
What is best for us is best for them. If we 
like to be treated with kindness, consideration, 
courtesy, so do children. If children ought to 
be polite to parents, parents ought to be polite 
to children. 

One day a lady called who was very fond 
of Bertie : so Bertie was brought in. He was 
just ready to go out to play, with coat and 
mittens on, and comforter w T ell tied clown over 

his cap ; so I said, " I think Mrs. S will 

excuse you, Bertie, for keeping your cap on a 
few minutes." Bertie went through his part 
promptly and properly enough, and I dismissed 
him to his sled ; but he lingered ; then I said, 
" If you choose to stay, Bertie, I will take your 



68 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

cap off for you." But from some cause or 
other Bertie chose neither to go nor to have 
his cap off ; and the upshot was, I marched the 
little boy out of the room in disgrace. I was 
not angry — I was surprised, and it seemed the 
only thing to do ; yet somehow I wish I had 
not done it. The very fact that it did surprise 
me, that it was not like Bertie, should have 
held me back. When a man of good reputa- 
tion does something which contradicts his past 
life, we suspend judgment. We give him the 
benefit, then, of his fair fame. Bertie's good 
name should have shielded him from swift 
judgment. Again, it is not considered good 
taste for grown people to quarrel when com- 
pany is present. If the husband is ill-humored 
and grouty before guests, the wife turns it 
skillfully aside with graceful pleasantry, and 
makes the rough places plain. When she is 
alone with him, if she is a good wife, mindful 
of her marriage vows, she gives him a sound 
moral drubbing ; but before company she will 



BRINGING UP PARENTS. 69 

make every thing go smoothly or die. I should 
have done the same with Bertie. What right 
had I to mortify him and embarrass my guest 
by giving prominence to his momentary ill- 
manners ? At heart I do not think he was ill- 
mannered. Probably the chief cause of his 
misbehavior was shyness, for shyness expresses 
itself in many strange ways. If I had taken 
no notice of Bertie's behavior at the time, but 
had afterward showed him its impropriety, and 
perhaps told him that when I had another vis- 
itor I should not be able to let him enter the 
room, I think I should have done all the good, 
and missed all the harm that the other course 
wrought. To be sure, the visitor would have 
thought that Bertie was not verv well brought 
up ; but which is most important, that Mrs. 

S should think Bertie is brought up well, 

or that Bertie should be brought up well ? But 
there is no High Court of Appeal for children, 
so Bertie was sent to Coventry all the after- 
noon ; and at supper we Pharisees gathered 



70 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

high and mighty around the table, while the 
poor little publican and sinner sat in his rock- 
ing-chair by the fire, eating the bread and but- 
ter of bitterness, and making pathetic little 
well-bred attempts to ease off the situation by 
entering into talk as if nothing had happened ; 
in all of which he was persistently snubbed, 
and, finally, had to ask my pardon. Oh ! Ber- 
tie, little abused apostle of goodness, I ask your 
pardon ! Will a thousand kisses make it up ? 
Will a cunning little hem-stitched handker- 
chief, and two pairs of stockings all striped 
up and down, and the brightest of little scarlet 
gloves, and a ton of candy, be any atonement % 
The very best method to bring up a child in 
the way he should go is to go in that way your- 
self. Be yourself that which you wish your 
child to be. If parents would " behave them- 
selves," family government might speedily be- 
come one of the lost arts. Let the father and 
mother be civil, considerate, patient, sweet-tem- 
pered, low-voiced, obliging, truthful, and ten- 



BRINGING UP PAEENTS. 71 

der, and pretty much all they would need do 
to their children would be to stand aside and 
see them grow ! A child's heart, immeasur- 
ably dear and close as it is, is also and forever 
distinct and inscrutable. One can not always 
see into it to straighten out the kinks, but one 
can look into his own heart and control that ; 
and, seeing your wise and beneficent self-con- 
trol, your child insensibly learns to govern his 
own little waywardnesses, and becomes good 
without knowing it. The ill-behavior of chil- 
dren is the direct and logical consequence of 
the ill-behavior of their parents. The fathers 
eat sour grapes in plain sight, and the chil- 
dren's teeth can hardly help being set on edge. 
The parents behave like children, and then ex- 
pect their children to behave like mature per- 
sons. The mother maltreats her child into 
fretf ulness and disobedience, and then shuts 
him up in a closet for punishment, when she 
ought to shut herself in the closet with ashes 
on her head. The only mitigating considera- 



72 NURSERY NOONINGS.' 

tion is that the parents are themselves the vic- 
tims of their parents' errors, and so we get 
back, by short and easy stages, to Adam and 
original sin. 

On the other hand, we rarely see a well-be- 
haved family of children where there seems to 
be any thing in particular going on to make 
them so. They seem to come up like a flower 
of their own sweet nature. They move easily 
among themselves, like the atoms of a drop of 
water, yet, like those atoms, make a symmet- 
rical w T hole. There is neither rule nor mis- 
rule ; in fact, there is not much government. 
Every thing goes without saying. There is 
no system except to follow nature; and na- 
ture prescribes, for children as w r ell as for 
adults, for individuals as w T ell as for nations — 
freedom. If a child abuse that freedom, let 
him be punished as nature punishes — by 
the consequences of his act, not by an arbi- 
trary infliction. For instance, we say, truly, 
that obedience is very desirable, and may be 



BEINGING UP PAEENTS. 73 

taught to a year-old child. A spoon lies on 
the table, and the mother forbids the baby in 
her lap to touch it. By a series of stern looks 
and approving looks, and perhaps a smart pat 
or two, and some crying on Baby's part, the 
lesson is taught, and Baby henceforth knows 
better than to touch the spoon. Then we all 
turn up our eyes and say how judicious is that 
mother, and how well - reared that family ! 
But, really, is any thing gained ? To be sure 
the child has learned to obey his mother, but 
he has learned it arbitrarily ; and a good end 
is not necessarily reached when one human 
being has simply learned to submit his will to 
a stronger will or a stronger force. What the 
world needs is not w r eaker wills, but wiser wills 
— wills under the control of reason and right- 
eousness. Put such things as are destructible 
beyond Baby's reach, and then let him make 
all the investigations he pleases. Is the land 
groaning under its weight of awakened mind 
that we should build barricades around awak- 



74 NI7ESEKY NOONINGS. 

ing mind? The child will begin to be stupid 
and passive full soon enough. After a certain 
period the mind seems to double-lock all its 
gates, and forbid entrance to any more ideas ; 
but while it is inquisitive let us help and not 
hinder it. A child is a philosopher pursuing 
his researches. He takes as much delight in 
a table full of dishes as the natural historian 
does in a river full of fishes. Will he break 
them if allowed to handle them ? So does the 
man kill the fishes. But we do not, on that 
account, tie his hands behind him; on the 
contrary, we send him up the Amazon to 
fish all he will, and call it science. Nature 
shows us just how to manage it, if we only 
would look and listen. She makes the baby 
so small and weak that he can not get at any 
thing which he can hurt. He has to fumble 
all over his little face with his little fist, trying 
to rub his little nose, and then he does it in a 
back-handed, uncertain fashion. It is a long 
leap toward manhood when he can get his 



BRINGING UP PARENTS. 75 

dear little toes into his dear little mouth. Nat- 
ure keeps him so small that he can not reach 
things till he is capable of handling them. It 
is we who balk nature, and wreak it on the 
baby. "We drop the table-cloth down straight 
into the baby's hands, and then are vexed be- 
cause he pulls it off. " Good Heavens, Mad- 
am !" a reasonable baby might say, " why was 
that thing hanging down here if not for me to 
clutch it ? What were my hands given me for 
but to use? Chain up your coffee-pot, and 
don't tumble it down on my head I" 

Must children, then, be suffered to have their 
own way in every thing ? 

Generally, yes. Why not % Grown people 
have their way. If the parents are good and 
wise, the children will naturally take the right 
way. If the parents are not good and wise, 
the children's way will probably be nearer 
right than the parents'. The chubby hand 
throws down the spoon in a pet. You can 
pick, it up and smite the wayward hand. But 



76 NUESERY NOONINGS. 

the more excellent, because the more natural, 
course is to take no notice of it, and let the 
spoon lie there. Nature teaches men and wom- 
en by showing them and making them bear 
the result of their actions. She would teach 
children the same way if we did not interfere. 
Baby cries over his lost spoon; but let him 
cry. Crying is natural and wholesome, and, 
ten to one, far more sensible than the talk 
which it supplants. Who, for the mere sound 
of the thing, would not rather hear a baby cry 
all day than to hear most men — and women, 
too, for that matter — talk about woman's 
sphere ? When the baby cries, he does his 
best; but when his aged relatives talk, you 
feel that they have not dealt fairly by the 
sense which their Creator originally gave them. 
The mistake is in supposing that a child's 
" own way " is the wrong way. It is we old 
people whose ways are wrong. We will not 
take the trouble to be calm, unselfish, gener- 
ous, self-controll ed ourselves, but we pay to 



BRINGING UP PARENTS. 77 

those virtues the tribute of imposing them on 
our children. " Js T ow, Neddy, be generous," 
says papa, " and give little brother half your 
plums." And if Neddy do it not, a ton of 
Sunday-school literature is ready to bury him 
alive with horror. Very well. Now, when 
Neddy's papa's uncle dies, and leaves Neddy's 
papa ten thousand dollars, let us see him turn 
about and give his brother half of that plum ! 
"It is very wrong for Katy to quarrel with 
her little sister." And then Katy is treated to 
a long and serious talk, which makes her feel 
very miserable and wicked till she has sobbed 
out her sorrow, and kissed her little sister, and 
offered up in atonement every valued posses- 
sion she has in the world. And then Katy's 
papa goes down to his office and writes an ed- 
itorial which nips his neighbor's newspaper in 
every other line, and never a sob sobs he over 
his sin ; but if you upbraid him, he stands up 
for it and laughs at you, and says all is fair in 
love and war. Bringing up children, indeed ! 



78 NURSEBY NOONINGS. 

Tf you want pure, unadulterated virtue, go to 
the children. Find me anions: the annals of 
any extant Christian Church a finer example 
of perfect self-sacrifice, of smiling, unconscious 
heroism, of sweet, instantaneous adaptation to 
the frailty of the weaker vessel, than was dis- 
played by James the Greatest, saint and mar- 
tyr, when his mother — hurried, worried, and 
wearied — called him in from his play to be 
dressed, and brandished the comb through his 
hair not too gently : " That's right, mamma !" 
cried Jamie. " Yank it all you want to !" 

A little boy was investigating the waiting- 
room of a railroad station. He was perhaps 
five years old, with a flushed face, very dusty 
and dirty ; but his clothes were good, and he 
might have been clean in the morning. He 
seemed quietly amusing himself, when a rough 
voice said, " Look here ! do you want me to take 
you out-doors and give you a good whipping ? 
Well, I will if you don't behave. Come here 
and sit down. Now sit still." The speaker 



BRINGING UP PARENTS. 79 

was a tall young fellow, looking not more than 
twenty years old, accompanying a woman who 
might have been his mother or his wife ; and 
neither of them had sense or affection enough 
to let the child run about the room, disturbing 
no one, but insisted on his sitting still between 
them. Of course the little fellow screamed, 
and the big fellow jerked him down all the 
harder, and threatened to whip him, and to put 
him out of the window, and made ten times as 
much trouble as the child would have made if 
let alone. In fact, so far as appeared, the 
right was, as usual, wholly on the child's part, 
who was but following a nature which had 
had only four or five years to be spoiled in, 
while the man had been spoiling for twenty 
years. Now there is no tyranny more abso- 
lute than the tyranny of an adult over a child. 
Power, position, every thing is on his side ; 
and on the child's side utter moral, mental, 
and spiritual helplessness. Such power in the 
hands of a low, stupid, cruel nature is some- 



80 NUKSEJRY NOONINGS. 

thing appalling. I can not 'think of any rem- 
edy, except, perhaps, a punishment which shall 
be homoeopathic in quality and allopathic in 
quantity. For instance, it would be excellent 
for a strong man to come along with a horse- 
whip and make this young fellow stand on his 
head, and whenever he flags a little, swaying 
to this side or that, give him a smart cut, or a 
dozen cuts, with the whip. It is just as rea- 
sonable to demand Twenty Years to stand on 
his head three quarters of an hour, as to re- 
quire Four Years to sit still three quarters of 
an hour. And possibly the position might 
force a little sense into his skull. In its nor- 
mal attitude it certainly held none. 

It is a great mistake to keep children too 
long or too entirely in a state of pupilage. 
Few things so dwarf a child's mind and irri- 
tate its temper as the constant and necessarily 
petty exercise of authority. A child should 
be thrown on its own responsibility just as fast 
and just as far as possible. The needless in- 



BRINGING UP PARENTS. 81 

tervention of adults, even though made in and 
with the tenderest kindness, is injurious to both 
intellectual and moral character. Better a 
child should have many tumbles, and walk 
alone, than be upheld always by his mother's 
hand. Children would learn to reason far 
more than they do if their elders were not so 
eager to reason for them. And if children 
were more accustomed to use their reason, 
there would not be so much false assumption 
and insufficient induction among grown peo- 
ple. Let things follow each other naturally, 
and the little folks will very soon be logical 
without knowing it. 

Jenny's heart is set on wearing her new silk 
dress to the picnic. Her mother thinks, it is 
not a fit dress, and refuses — and does it all for 
Jenny's good, the martyr — and Jenny cries 
and pouts and sulks, and is very unhappy, and 
shall be glad when she grows up and can wear 
her best clothes at her liking. 

How would it do, now, for Jenny's mamma 
F 



82 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

to let her wear the silk dress ? She tells Jen- 
ny that it is not in good taste ; that she must 
be so careful not to soil and spoil it that she 
can not enjoy the picnic ; that, whether this is 
spoiled or not, she can not have another silk 
dress to take its place ; but she shall decide for 
herself. I believe, ten to one, Jenny would 
agree with her mother, and be charming in 
her white pique. But suppose she yields to 
the sheen of the silk. She goes to the picnic 
party, takes great thought for her raiment the 
first half -hour, and then — if she is a nice little 
girl — forgets all about it, sails in the boat, 
and splashes her dress ; eats ice-cream, which 
trickles on the flounces ; drops her sandwich in 
her lap buttered side down, and comes home 
altogether a sore spotted, and dilapidated lit- 
tle maiden. Then the unnatural mother need 
not stand up with an I-am-holier-than-thou air, 
and add to the midget's distress by saying, " I 
told you so." She may comfort and calm her, 
and assure her that life is tolerable even after 



BEINGING UP PAEENTS. 83 

one has spotted one's only silk gown. But 
there is the spotted dress teaching Jenny the 
inexorableness of law, the necessity of pru- 
dence, the w T isdom of parents. It has no ten- 
derness, no affection for Jenny, and all her 
sighing will not minish aught of stain or 
splash. Every time Jenny puts it on the ugly 
defacements say to her, " Jenny, your mamma 
was right. It is better to wear wash-goods to 
picnics, in order that you may not have to 
wear shabby silks a year afterward." So Jen- 
ny learns to respect her mother's authority, 
and to judge of fitness in garments, and has 
thus started on the way of prudent, careful 
womanhood. 

No ; she does no such thing, because her 
fond and tidy mother steps in and spoils every 
thing. What ! let her child wear that shabby 
dress to dancing - school and church 1 Let 
those stains and spots stay on % She would 
be considered a tidy housekeeper, indeed — a 
thrifty woman, a careful mother ! Not she ! 



84 NURSEEY NOONINGS. 

So she upsets all the arrangements of Provi- 
dence, takes out the grease with French chalk 
and warm iron, puts in a new breadth for the 
splashed one, and sends Jenny forth, smiling 
and happy and fresh as new, and therefore 
not in the least benefited by her experience. 
Because her mother has interposed between 
error and its result, Jenny will forget both. 
Mamma acts for Jenny's good, does she ? Oh 
no ! it is for the good of Jenny's gown ; it is 
for the good of her own name. She forbids 
Jenny to wear the silk, in the first place, to 
save the silk. She is more concerned that the 
fine frock shall be unspoiled than that Jenny's 
mind shall brace itself up to self-action. She 
rejuvenates it, in the second place, because she 
is more concerned to have the reputation of 
thrift with her neighbors than to have Jenny 
receive a thorough and wholesome lesson. Ah, 
the selfishness of these mothers ! 

Some children have what appears to be an 
ineradicable tendency to lateness. Whether 



BRINGING UP PARENTS. 85 

the errand be duty or pleasure, they are al- 
ways behindhand. Their parents are contin- 
ually urging and reminding — drumming them 
up, as the phrase goes. Whether they are go- 
ing to church or to school or to a pleasure- 
drive, the few last moments are tempestuous 
with hurry. Father is angry ; mother is an- 
gry too, but keeps it down because father is, 
and it will never do to have both in a rage to- 
gether ; and for half an hour every one is 
nervous, flushed, and uncomfortable — and "I 
declare, Ella, if you can not be ready in sea- 
son, I will go without you. I will not have 
such a fuss every time you are going any 
where." 

Yes you will, papa, have just such a fuss ; 
and you will not go off without her, and Ella 
knows it. That is just what you ought to do, 
but just what you will not do. Ella is four- 
teen years old now, and if yon had been going 
to do it you would have done it seven years 
ago. And how easy a thing it is to do ! You 



OO NURSEKY NOONINGS. 

announce at dinner that you will drive at sev- 
en, and all the children who are ready then 
may drive with you. Ella is of an age to take 
care of herself, and you say nothing to her 
about being in season. If she do not begin to 
dress soon enough, you remain quiet. You do 
not suggest to her that in fifteen minutes the 
carriage will be here. You leave her to the 
logic of events. Neither shall you be severe 
and stern and virtuous, my Pharisee, who are 
probably ten times worse than Ella, only there 
is no one to stand over you and tell you so. 
You are sunshiny and natural a-nd affection- 
ate ; and when seven o'clock strikes, and Ella 
is rushing around frantic after her boot-but- 
ton er, you bid her good-by cheerily, hope you 
will have her company some evening before 
she is twenty-one, and drive off ; and you say 
nothing about it afterward. You do not irri- 
tate her with long harangues about the evil 
consequences of tardiness. A very erroneous 
supposition it is that parents are to do every 



BRINGING UP PARENTS. 87 

thing for the children. Let them alone, and 
give Nature a chance. Events will train them 
if parents will not insist on putting their hands 
in and making a tangle. When Ella, left to 
her own devices, has lost half a dozen drives, 
and received half a dozen tardy marks at 
school, and walked six times to church, blowzy, 
frowzy, and alone, she will yield to the inevita- 
bleness of law, and bestir herself in season. 
At least I would try it. 

Children ought to have a regular income 
while they are yet very young, certain bounds 
within which to spend it, perfect freedom 
within those bounds, and not too much advice. 
Children may be treated like winter rye and 
red-top. If you want an early field or a green 
lawn in spring, you need not wait till spring 
comes. You will then sow in uncertainty ; 
for, with all your agricultural knowledge, you 
can not tell the precise time when snow and 
rain strike an average and the seed will be 
safe. You are in danger of sowing too early 



88 NUESERY NOONINGS. 

and losing the seed, or sowing too late and 
losing time. But trust Nature. Put the little 
seed into the ground in the fall, and let it 
judge for itself. It will lie intact all winter 
in the frozen embrace of the sod ; and, with- 
out a moment's delay or a moment's error, at 
the exact time it will spring forth into glad- 
ness and life. 

So, if you wait and watch for the hour when 
a child shall evince wisdom enough to assume 
responsibility, you will scarcely hit the mark. 
You will fall short or go beyond. But give 
him the responsibility outright. His little soul 
will be indifferent to it, unconscious of it, un- 
harmed by it, till the fullness of time is come, 
and then, without waste or hurry, it lays firm 
hold of the new power. 

It seems a little whimsical to attach any im- 
portance to the possession of money by chil- 
dren ; but money is the best teacher in the 
world. It is sure, exacting, unbending, logic- 
al. It is the standard not only of material 



BEINGING UP PAKENTS. 89 

but also of moral values. In one sense, a 
man's character may be determined by his 
money. He who is lax in money matters is 
organically lax. A man's honor never rises 
one sixteenth of an inch higher than his prin- 
ciples about debt and credit. Men and wom- 
en who are careless about payments will do 
mean things. You may call their carelessness 
generosity, or high spirit, or any other fine 
name, but it is always capable of meanness, 
and it generally puts its capability into prac- 
tice. This is a quality which parents ought to 
dig out of a child's heart, or else dig his heart 
out. It is only by being complete master of 
money that he can learn its nature and limits ; 
and the complete mastery of a very small sum 
will teach him every thing he needs to know. 
What he needs to know is, first, intellectually 
the value of money ; and, second, morally its 
uses. The little boy who has charge of his 
own confectionery department, with five cents 
a week or one cent a week for capital, is com- 



90 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

passing more of prudence, economy, contriv- 
ance, combination, than fifty paternal lectures 
will give him. Yet I have seen girls and boys 
growing up to be fourteen and fifteen years 
old with no money except a chance penny, or 
half a dollar on a holiday. They have every 
comfort and many luxuries ; what do they 
want of money, which they w T ould only spend 
f oolishly ? Then take away some of their lux- 
uries, give them money instead, and let them 
spend it foolishly, and see what comes of it. 
As it is, these children have no idea of the 
value of money, or indeed of any thing else. 
Consequently they are extravagant and de- 
structive. They have nothing but the eye to 
fix their choice. They do not know the differ- 
ence between a little mischief and a great deal 
of mischief. If they break your watch crystal, 
they will feel as much terror as if they had 
ruined your watch ; and, worse than this, hav- 
ing no money to pay for the repair, and so 
make, or at least offer, honorable reparation, 



BRINGING UP PAEENTS. 91 

they conceal it from their parents, instinctively 
trusting their secret to your delicacy. So they 
are not only failing to prepare for a mauly 
future, but are actually preparing for an un- 
manly one. 

The daughter does not understand income 
and expenditure, and does not know how many 
ways there are for money to go, and how close- 
ly her mother must look at a dollar before she 
decides which way to start it. But the mother 
knows, or ought to know, how much she can 
afford to spend on the girl's dress. Why not 
give her the money, and let her spend it her- 
self? No matter if she make mistakes. It 
is far better to make them now, while she 
has her mother for a court of last resort, than 
by and by, when she is called upon to act for 
herself, and has large interests at stake. The 
parents think their daughter is unreasonable 
in her requirements, but she is not. She has 
no means of knowing what is. reasonable or 
unreasonable. She has no income, and she 



92 NUESEKY NOONINGS. 

can not know what expense is proportionate. 
By and by, when she marries, she will be the 
sort of wife that will tease her husband into 
buying camel's-hair shawls and velvet carpets, 
which he can not afford ; and he will avenge 
himself by writing a letter to the newspapers 
on the extravagance of women. But women 
are not really half so extravagant as men. 
They will patiently and unprotestingly prac- 
tice small economies which men scorn. Men 
will spend recklessly for their personal com- 
fort where women will sacrifice personal com- 
fort altogether. 

The trouble with the extravagant wife, and 
with the unreasonable girl from whom she 
sprang, is the same — the absence of a fixed in- 
come, and therefore any standard of expense. 
Give the young girl a stated sum, and make 
her responsible for her gloves, handkerchiefs, 
ribbons, shoes, and, as she matures, for her 
whole wardrobe. She will very soon develop 
a surprising carefulness. She will be as wise 



BRINGING UP PAEBNTS. 93 

as her mother about wearing her best cream- 
colored gloves in the railroad train, and as par- 
ticular as her mother about folding her rib- 
bons without crumpling, and looking after her 
laces from the wash. In fact, I am sorry to 
say that the beautiful daughter, the noble son, 
may discover a latent meanness in connection 
with their money which is appalling. The 
girl who is forward to give gifts, and lavish in 
expense, when she has to extract it all spas- 
modically from her father, is no sooner made 
mistress of an annuity than she becomes what, 
if she were an old man and not a lovely young 
girl, we should call miserly, greedy, cunning. 
She declines to give and grudges to pay ; and 
in her small ribbon -y, glove- y way, tries to 
overreach. Well if this quality reveal itself 
under the loving mother's eye, that her loving 
hand may check the hateful growth ; that her 
loving lips may teach, day after day, the duty 
and delight of benevolence and generosity 
and, first of all, uprightness. 



94: NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

But mothers will none of these things. They 
will not let their girls alone, to spend and save 
and suffer and grow strong. Untrustworthy 
race, I know what you do. You constantly in- 
terfere between cause and effect. When your 
daughters have spent their allowance, you 
make them presents. "When they have run 
behindhand, you anticipate the next payment. 
When they see something more costly than 
their means will allow, they tease you for it, 
and you presently buy it. When they are suf- 
fering from a three-days' lack of money, you 
give them a dollar or two out of your own 
purse. So you destroy the only condition 
which gives the arrangement value, viz., un- 
changingness, inevitability. Whenever the law 
pinches, you step in and thrust it aside. But it 
is the pinch that enforces the law ; and having 
done every thing you ought not to do, and left 
undone every thing that you ought to do, mix- 
ing up law and license, pleasure and pain, in 
irretrievable confusion, you fold your hands 



BEINGING UP PAEENTS. 95 

and think yourself a devoted mother. And 
so you are, and your children will, no doubt, 
one day rise up and call you blessed ; but 
could you not make things easier in the 
process % 

Also should it be most thoroughly under- 
stood that this arrangement of income is 
merely an arrangement of common interests, 
and not the payment of money to a foreign 
power. A little girl was once alienated for 
life from her father because he made her 
wear two figs strung around her neck to 
punish her for having stolen them from the 
dinner-table. How great was her sin, or how 
incommensurate the punishment, history fur- 
nishes us no aggravating nor extenuating cir- 
cumstances by which to judge; but I desire 
to protest against the unwisdom and injustice 
of calling such an act stealing, or of assuming 
for a moment that there can be any such thing 
as stealing between parents and little children. 
It may be disobedience, and, if not suppressed, 



96 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

it may lead to theft — but theft it is not ; and 
if it were, I would not let a child think so. 
There are pitfalls enough for his little soul to 
stumble into without leading him out of his 
path to throw him into one that he would 
never have found himself. 

Every thing that tends to create a division 
of interests between parents and children 
should be discouraged. Every thing that 
tends to create unity should be fostered. It is 
never too early to make a child feel his own- 
ership of home — not the ownership of tyranny 
and selfishness, but of affection and attach- 
ment. Let him have his share of the proprie- 
torship in all its comforts, conveniences, lux- 
uries, and self-denials. I do not know what 
the law would say, but they are his. The 
rights of a child are the strongest in the 
world. His absolute inability to defend them 
throws a sacred burden upon grown-up people. 
He owns every thing he is born to. The 
wealth of his father is his by divine right. 



BRINGING UP PARENTS. 97 

All that his parents can do — what they are 
strictly bound to do — is to pass over his prop- 
erty to him in such measure, by such means, 
as shall be most for his welfare. To talk of 
his stealing figs from his father's table is ab- 
surd. The table is his, figs, father, and all. 
He must keep his little hands off, because it is 
not good manners to put them on, because he 
will get his fingers sticky and soil his frock, 
because the time for figs is not yet, and he 
must not take his till Kate and Mary and 
Frank have theirs; but not in the least be- 
cause the figs belong to somebody else, and 
not him. And if his little confused, fumbling, 
twilight soul half thinks it is stealing, does 
not rightly know the difference, soothe away 
the vagueness, or hush it away by silence. 
One sin at a time is enough for him to be 
saddled with. When he has been ordered not 
to touch the figs, there is a clear case of dis- 
obedience. Let it stand out by itself, not be 
mixed in with something else. Since nothing 
G 



98 NURSEEY NOONINGS. 

has ever been said to him about it, wherein 
does his fault consist? But children are so 
conscientious that they will often show signs 
of guilt when a wise man will be puzzled 
to define it. The part of wisdom is not to 
multiply iniquities, but to diminish them. 
Bessie had contracted a habit — a mere habit — 
of waking up in the night and going to her 
mother's room. Presently her mother told 
her she must not come into her room again 
unless she were sick. The very next night I 
was awakened, and aware of a little midget 
pawing rapidly over the head of my bed with 
speechless but ferocious resolution, and down 
snuggled Bessie, not half awake, and in a min- 
ute not even that. In the morning, and in the 
full possession of her senses, conscious crime 
gnawed at Bessie's heart, and when she heard 
her mother's step coming in search of her she 
for an instant contemplated concealment. But 
her mother was wise enough to pass it over 
slightly, and it was with great relief that Bessie 



BRINGING UP PARENTS. 99 

bounced up after she was gone, and cried, " She 
didn't care a bit." 

And Bessie was not the least harmed by it, 
though that evil and bitter thing, " a strict dis- 
ciplinarian," might have made out a first-class 
case of disobedience and evasion. It was 
nothing of the sort. It was strict obedience 
and admirable invention, showing a fertility 
of resource while half asleep that promised 
well for future usefulness when wide awake. 

It seems to me it is always best to make out 
as little sin as possible ; to assume as much 
good intent as possible; to attribute innocent 
motives, and call a child good for the sake of 
inducing him to become so ; to dispense with 
rules, and not make much ado about noth- 
ing. Why should a parent be constantly 
coming out witli a command, and bringing 
his will face to face with his child's ? It is 
sometimes, doubtless, unavoidable, but it is not 
very often. Children, as a general thing, do 
not need to be ordered about, or to be kept 



100 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

back with a sword. They are amenable to 
the law written in their hearts. They learn 
very early to understand the relations of figs 
and cake, and pie and preserves, if they are 
treated like reasonable beings and interested 
friends. But if they are put under ban; if 
no confidence is reposed in them, and no dis- 
cretion is expected of them ; if their constitu- 
tional government is simply "you shall" and 
"you shall not;" if they are made to go in 
leading-strings, and dainties are locked away 
from them, and every thing is the property of 
their parents, and they have no rights in the 
sugar-bowl and jam-pot which their elders are 
bound to respect, but stand on the same foot- 
ing with the beggar-boy in the streets — why, 
it would be very strange if they should not 
steal the figs ; and were the case left to me, I 
should make the father wear them around his 
neck, and see that the string was drawn tight 
and tidy ! 



A MAN-CHILD. 101 



IY. 

A MAN-CHILD. 



Scene : in the country. Dramatis personce : 
Opal, aged seven ; Inspired Idiot, aged five. 

Opal (loquitur) : " Eh ! 1. 1., won't you feel 
nice by and by, when we go back to town, and 
you have to have a nurse following you round 
every where ?" 

1. 1, feels the iron enter into his soul> but the 
far-oif shining sun of manhood rises with heal- 
ing in his wings. 

"But one of these days, Opal, I shall be a 
big boy. I shall be thirteen years old. I shall 
be as big as Vaughan, and then I shall go ev- 
ery where. But you, Opal, you never will be 
a boy. You will always be a girl." 

" Yes, but I sha'n't have a nurse always. I 
shall go by myself." 

This 1. 1, can not gainsay, and he squares 



102 NUESERY NOONINGS. 

himself as bravely as may be to endure the 
degradation of a nurse. Or to fling it off. 
Which shall it be ? I know of a boy nine years 
old who has never been out-doors in the city 
without being under the eyes of his nurse. 
There is a certain sense of safety and protec- 
tion in this which must be very comforting to 
the mother ; but does it not mar self-reliance, 
and irritate the love of adventure which ought 
to exist in boys? The Inspired Idiot gradu- 
ally wears away from the thraldom of nurse 
and guardian, and fronts the world alone. A 
thousand dangers menace him. He is caught 
swinging under carriages in the thronged street, 
and violently brought home. He strays into 
horse-cars, rides into the suburbs, and is brought 
back by the police. He wanders into hotels, 
and motherly women lay hands upon him, and 
wash his face — an attention which he seems 
to consider as much in order as any other rite 
of a fashionable call. Here he comes now, 
swinging up the steps, overcoat unbuttoned and 



A MAN-CHILD. 103 

flying open, cap bravely set on .the back of his 
head, both hands in his pockets, well content 
with all the world. 

" Eli ! Opal ! Yoh ! See what I've bought 
for yon ! Bertha Blonde, eh 1" 

"But where did yon get the money?" 

" Mr. Olde gave it to me and all that is her 
dresses. Look-a-here, Opal I" 

"But who is Mr. Olde? What Mr. Olde 
gave you the money ?" 

" Mr. Olde gave it to me. That's up where 
father is." 

" How did you know his name was Olde V 

"'Cause I know him. I tumbled over his 
leg once." 

This must be accepted as proof of intimacy. 

" But, 1. 1., did you ask him for money ? 
Beggar-boys do that." 

" No, I didn't ask him, neither " — in an ag- 
grieved tone. 

" How came he to give it to you, then ? Tell 
us all about it. Where did you see him ?" 



104 NUKSEKY NOONINGS. 

" On thavenue." 

" And you went up and asked him for 
money ?" 

" No, I didn't ask him. He gave it to me." 

"Tell me just what he said first. Did you 
speak to him first, or he to you ?" 

" Pie spoke to me. He said what was I cry- 
ing for and I said a boy got my rattle-bones 
and he said all right and he gave me twenty- 
five cents." 

" But where did you get your rattle-bones V 

" I bought 'em." 

" Where did you get that money ?" 

" I got it home. Father gave it to me and 
I went down street and I went into a store 
and I bought my rattle-bones and — " 

" How much did you pay for them ?" 

" Twenty-five cents and I and — look-a-here 
— I bought my rattle-bones and I come out 
and a boy came along — e-h-h" — (gasping for 
breath in the rapidly increasing rush of nar- 
rative) — "lemme tell you! — and a boy came 



A MAN-CHILD. 105 

up and lie said would I lend him my rattle- 
bones and he would give me some cake and I 
gave him my rattle-bones and he said he must 
go round the corner and get the cake and he 
took my rattle-bones and — e-h-h — -he went 
round the corner — Opal, would you rathek 
have Bessy Blue than Bertha Blonde? 'cause 
I'll go down thavenue and change it !" 

" No, no ; never mind Bessy Blue. What 
did the boy do when he got round the corner ?" 

" Lemme tell you ! He got my rattle-bones 
and he went round to get the cake and never 
came back and I went round to get him and 
he wasn't there and the man that had the cake 
said he had not been there no more never and 
— eh-h-h — he had my rattle-bones and never 
. came back and — he ought to 'a told me he's 
a thief!" with a sndden yell, as it dawned 
upon him that he had been cheated. 

" Then Mr. Olde came up, and you asked 
him to give you some money, did you ?" 

"No, I did not ask him. Mr. Olde came 



106 NURSEEY NOONINGS. 

along and I was crying 'cause that boy he 
didn't come back with my rattle-bones; he'd 
gone off with my rattle-bones and Mr. Olde 
asked me w T hat w T as I crying for and I said a 
boy had run off with my rattle-bones — Opal, 
donH yon want Bessy Blue ?" 

" Yes ; I said Bessy Blue all the time." 

" Well, I asked for Bessy Blue and she gave 
me Bertha Blonde and I didn't know 'twas 
Bertha Blonde till I got home. Gimme here, 
Opal ; I'll go and change it." 

" You said a boy had run off with your rat- 
tle-bones. What did Mr. Olde say then ?" 

"And Mr. Olde said" — resuming his rapid 
recitative — " Mr. Olde said he said what did 
my rattle-bones cost and I said twenty-five 
cents and he gave me twenty-five cents and 
said go buy some more — e-h-h — and I said I 
wanted to buy Opal some paper dolls too and 
he said what would that cost and I said twen- 
ty-five cents and he said all right and he gave 
me twenty -five cents more and I bought Opal's 



A MAN-CHILD. 107 

paper doll. I asked for Bessy Blue — e-h-h — 
and she gave me Bertha Blonde and it was 
dark and I couldn't see till I got 'most home 
and I couldn't go back to buy my rattle-bones 
'cause 'twas too far and Mr. Olde said all right 
and I've got my quarter, I've got him ! There 
he is !" brandishing his scrip aloft with a shout 
of exultation. 

"And then you came directly home alone?" 
" No, Mr. Olde came with me. And I went 
into a store with him like where you go, mam- 
ma. I have been there with you, mamma." 
"Did Mr. Olde ask you to go in with him?" 
" No ; .a man came out and made him go in 
and me. And he gave him some Champagne 
and me too and I tasted it and I did not like 
it and then he gave me some more and I did 
not like that either and I said that wasn't the 
Champagne my father drinks and he said ' Try 
him with the sherry ' and I did not like that 
either and they laughed and then we came 
home and Mr, Olde went to the Clarendon and 



108 NUKSEKY NOONINGS. 

he said ' Now you know the way home V and I 
said yes. Iloh ! jus' if I didn't know the way 
home !" 

And now approaches bed-time for the In- 
spired Idiot. Repeatedly during dinner, when 
he is tired of swallowing, has he plumped his 
head deep down into the folds of his mother's 
dress to rest and refresh himself for new de- 
glutitory efforts. After dinner he deploys on 
two chairs, or on the floor, it may be, in an ec- 
stasy of flatness. But when he goes up to bed 
his spirits revive. He kicks off first one shoe, 
then the other, and runs a race around the 
room in his stockings. Then he is moved with 
reminiscences of the marionettes, and he tells 
you how the Punch or some other puppet fell 
from a great height and was broken to pieces, 
and then gathered himself together, and " he 
rose and he rose and he rose till he had as 
many roses as there were before !" He is seized 
also with the spirit of prophecy, and glows 
with the guns and swords and ponies that he 



A MAN-CHILD. 109 

is speedily to become possessed of, and which 
gradually mount from one of each kind for 
himself to a thoroughly equipped cavalry force 
ready for battle. "And won't my pony look 
funny when he sees me coming ?" 

And now the outer layer of integuments is 
cajoled off, and he stands in the deshabille of 
Angola, eloquent and gesticulating, till the 
sprite of fun and frolic comes upon him, and 
he canters about the room once more, jumps 
upon the sofa, buries himself among the pil- 
lows, kicks up first one little red leg and then 
another, and only regrets that the supply ceases 
so soon ; and finally consents to have the rab- 
bit skinned, but with a demure and watchful 
look during the process, which shows that the 
rabbit must be closely watched, for he does 
not mean to rehabilitate himself when he is 
skinned, but to take a leap and a turn around 
the room in all the freedom of Paradise. 

And so presently the Inspired Idiot stands 
all white-robed and clean and sweet and still, 



110 NUESEKY NOONINGS. 

ready for the most earnest talk about things in 
heaven or earth or under the earth. His final 
fancy is to give a party, to which who shall be 
invited — Bertie Fletcher ? 

" Oh no. mamma ; because he wears a kilt, 
and all the boys would think he was a girl and 
would not play with him !" 

" Is that so ? I suppose, of course, you will 
invite Stephen Stetson." 

" No, I can't have Stephie Stetson because 
he is a naughty boy. He curses and swears." 

u I. I., what do you mean by cursing and 
swearing ? What is it to swear ?" 

" It is " — in a hushed, reverent voice — 
" why, it is to say God out of your prayers !" 

But the worst of it is that the Inspired Idiot 
is not exempt from the evils of life ; but j ust 
as painfully as the rest of us he must pay the 
penalty of nature's violated laws ; so he moans 
out of his sleep with the toothache, and is ef- 
fectually aroused by mighty pangs quite out 
of proportion with the tiny tooth that causes 



A MAN-CHILD. Ill 

them. He has sense enough not to increase 
the trouble by trying to bear it in silence, and 
shrieks and wails relieve his burdened nerves. 

" I never will forgive God for this," he cries, 
outraged and indignant, in the midst of his 
paroxysms. " I never will forgive God for 
this." 

It is a living and logical faith, however er- 
ratic in its philosophy. 

" But I don't think God is to blame for it," 
suggests an older and perhaps a wiser head. 

" Who is, then V asks I/I., opening to a new 
idea. 

" Little 1. 1., who stayed out in the cold too 
long and too late." 

And then another pang arises, stronger than 
the last, and he flings himself down to the foot 
of the bed, and shouts, "Now I am mad/" 

Poor little Inspired Idiot, grappling with 
feeble hands the great question of the origin 
of evil, bearing with questionable fortitude the 
fangs of evil itself, a little salt and soothing 



112 NUKSEKY NOONINGS. 

will lull your rebellion to sleep, but neither 
you nor I can go far in the wrong direction 
without running against the Almighty, even 
upon the thick bosses of his bucklers. We 
may believe in his goodness, but we are cer- 
tain of his power. 

By and by, when all has long been still, and 
care-takers have departed, a voice is heard — 
"Mamma, come up stairs!" A white figure 
stands sturdy and smiling at the head of the 
staircase. " Mamma,! heard it was ten o'clock, 
so I got up to take my med'cine, and I spilt it 
on my night-gown." Then as he sits warm- 
ing, drying, and comfortable before the fire, 
thus he muses : 

" Think I'll die, mamma ?" 
" What makes you think of dying ?" 
" 'Cause I didn't take my med'cine. I spilt 
it." 

" Oh no ! I don't think you will die for 
that." 
A pause. 



A MAN-CHILD. 113 

"Think I won't die, then?" 

" Not at all." 

" How will I see heaven, then ?" 

" But you don't want to die, do you ?" 

" No " — hesitatingly ; " but I should like to 
see heaven." 

Another long pause. 

" If I should get a very long ladder, couldn't 
I go up and look into heaven V 

"No." 

" If I should get a hundred and thirty lad- 
ders, couldn't I ?" 

"No." 

" If I should get all the ladders in all the 
world, in all the countries, and tie them one 
atop of another, couldn't I climb up and just 
peek in 8" 

"'No." 

" Why couldn't I, mamma ? Give a rea- 
son." 

" Because you would be dizzy and fall 
down !" 

H 



114 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

Go your ways, Inspired Idiot, man-child — 
tiny package of loves and hates and hopes and 
fears; timorous where helplessness itself is 
safe, and brave where the boldest quail; peer- 
ing with calm eyes into unfathomable myste- 
ries ; treading with equally serene feet the 
valley of the shadow of death and the remot- 
est fastnesses of life ; filled with great longings 
for airy nothings, and violent passions over 
petty grievances, and deep interests in passing 
trifles ; boisterous and ineffably gentle ; breezy 
and noisy and riotous, yet tender and nestling 
and delicate and soft ; ignorant and wise ; 
blind and baffled, yet shrewd and far-seeing ; 
pliant to a word, a touch, a look, a hint, yet as 
firm and fixed, as clearly outlined and as stead- 
ily set, as the veriest patriarch of the nations ! 
I wonder if Eve knew all she said when she 
looked upon her queer, new, first little man, 
and solemnly concluded her marveling medi- 
tations — "I have gotten a man from the 
Lord I" 



THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. 115 



V. 

THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. 

" Give a dog a bad name and kill him." 
It is a rough phrase, but it lives because it em- 
bodies a vital truth. Nor is the truth confined 
to dogs, nor even primarily spoken of dogs ; 
but, as Paul might say, it was written alto- 
gether for our sakes. 

A little child is born, innocent of theology, 
theoretically unacquainted with God, absolute- 
ly ignorant, and practically helpless in mind, 
body, and estate. If his parents are thieves, 
murderers, adulterers, profane swearers, drunk- 
ards, liars, there is a sad probability that he will 
become like them. If tl^ey fear God and walk 
in his ways, is there not a probability that the 
child will accompany them ? Is it not their 
duty to assume that he will ? 

It seems to me a real and serious defect in 



116 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

our orthodox polity or doctrine — whichever it 
is — that we give the children of the Church 
no advantage over the children of this world. 
On the contrary, they are almost under a dis- 
advantage. The little victims of the slums 
and alleys will be lost, indeed ; but their igno- 
rance will be a mitigation of their punishment, 
whereas the children of the Church will suffer 
the added poignancy of the sermons, the songs, 
the prayers, the teachings which they have 
heard and withstood. We assume, not the 
non-transmissibility of moral qualities, but the 
transmissibility of immoral qualities. In Adam 
we involuntarily died ; but in Christ none are 
made alive except by their own act. The sins 
of the parents are visited upon the children ; 
but their virtues stop with themselves. The 
children of parents who are friends of God 
must go through the same processes of con- 
viction of sin and conversion to holiness as 
the children of those who are haters of God or 
unacquainted with his name. Mental culture 



THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. 117 

changes the plane of life ; but moral and re- 
ligions culture permits each, generation to be- 
gin where its predecessor began. Every child, 
alike of Christian as of heathen parents, is born 
under the divine displeasure. 

Did my ears deceive me ? I was at a coun- 
cil convened for the purpose of inquiring into 
the disputed faith of a brother suspected of 
heretical tendencies. A paper was read in 
which he presented his creed ; and in this pa- 
per he announced his belief that we were all 
" born under the divine displeasure." He was 
ejected from the council ; though I can not 
affirm that this clause of his creed was, as it 
should have been, the immediate disposing 
cause. 

What is meant by being born under the di- 
vine displeasure ? Which does sin, the child 
or his parents ? When people who are thrift- 
less, shiftless, incapable of taking care of them- 
selves, quarrelsome, unprincipled, and wretch- 
ed introduce into the world a living soul, for 



118 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

whom they are unable to make any adequate 
provision, one can understand that they should 
incur the divine displeasure. But when a hus- 
band and wife who love each other become the 
delighted parents of a child, for whose com- 
fort, happiness, and welfare they are able and 
eager to provide, and on whom they lavish 
their best, why should the divine displeasure 
alight on them ? What law have they vio- 
lated ? what crime committed ? 

Or is it the poor little baby with whom God 
is angry ? Is there any council or any collec- 
tion of grown men who will venture to affirm 
that any sentient being in the heavens above 
or the earth beneath can view with a harsher 
feeling than profound compassion this helpless, 
unconscious little creature, born to its certain 
troubles and to its only possible joys ? The 
great God displeased with a baby ! " And Je- 
sus called a little child unto him, and set him 
in the midst of them ;" and when he had taken 
him in his arms, he said unto them : " Except 



THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. 119 

ye be converted and become as little children, 
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heav- 
en." How many heretics must agree, how 
many councils must announce that we are 
born under the divine displeasure, to neutral- 
ize the impression produced by Jesus Christ 
calling, caressing, blessing the little children ? 

If he is not displeased with the father and 
mother for being the parents of a child, nor 
with the child for being born, with whom is 
he displeased? Not with the general system 
under which such things happen, for it is his 
own institution. The mother might show good 
cause for displeasure ; but that an Omnipotent 
Being should have ordered the issues of life 
just as they are, and then be in a state of 
constant displeasure with them, seems ab- 
surd. 

I suppose the words are susceptible of some 
interpretation or explanation which shall ren- 
der them intelligible and acceptable to the 
rational mind; but in their simple, natural 



120 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

meaning, can the rational mind do any thing 
but reject them? As such words are used 
in the common language of the earth, they 
seem utterly false, derogatory to the divine 
character, and cruelly adapted to widen the 
breach between man and his Maker. So far 
is it from being true that we are born under 
the divine displeasure, I should rather say the 
one thing God can not be angry with us for 
is being born. Little children are under his 
peculiar patronage. Even when he is justly 
displeased with parents for their inconsiderate, 
selfish, wicked introduction of a fresh life to 
fresh sorrow, he can have only the deepest pity 
and love for the wretched little victim. And 
for the rest, for the honest, virtuous, thrifty 
Christian parents — to whom every child is a 
new incentive to love, a new development of 
grace, a new hold on life and hope — are not 
their children born under the very smile of 
God ? Sees he not in every opening life 
the perfect working of his plans, a gentle un- 



THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. 121 

folding of power, another centre of happi- 
ness ? 

Teach children from their infancy that they 
are carnally minded, at enmity with God, and 
that they need reconciliation with him, and 
doubtless after a while your teachings will be 
literally true. But why should not children 
be brought up from the beginning on good 
terms with their Maker? They are not nat- 
urally hostile to him. So far as I have seen 
children, they are naturally reverent, dutifully 
and even affectionately disposed toward God. 
They do not need reconciliation to him, for 
they have never quarreled with him. They 
need constant enlightenment, constant guid- 
ance, constant repression, it may be, and en- 
couragement; for they are weak and wild. 
But surely their dutiful and affectionate dis- 
position toward God ought to be recognized 
and cultivated. It should be assumed at the 
outset that they are his children, consecrated 
to him by the word, the deed, the very nature 



122 NUK8ERY NOONINGS. 

of their parents, bound to him by their own 
natural love and liking. They have not to be 
converted to him, any more than they have to 
their parents. He is their most loving parent, 
whom they love as fast as they learn. They 
will often sin against him, as they often sin 
against their father and mother. But from 
the little outbursts of childish rebellion, im- 
patience, or fatigue, we do not infer a state of 
continuous hatred to the mother. Why should 
we infer a state of hatred to God ? The an- 
ger and the petulance, even the disobedience, 
are not the rule, but the deviations from the 
rule. They are not because the child hates 
his parents, but because swift and sudden 
temptations overbear his sense of duty. All 
the way along, through the thick of his worst 
actions, his love maintains its strong and 
steady current, strengthening with his strength, 
growing clear and calm and pure as he in- 
creases in wisdom and stature, and never los- 
ing itself even when it mingles with the wa- 
ters of the river of life. 



THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. 123 

So let the little child be taught to love God 
— not against, but in unison with his nature. 
Let him be taught to consider himself a Chris- 
tian from the beginning — a little Christian, to 
be sure, but a little Christian ; not a little Pa- 
gan, not a little worldling. His lapses into 
sin — that is, into crossness and lies and disobe- 
dience and untidiness and carelessness — are 
beneath his standard, against his principles, 
contrary to his designs. He shall be helped 
by prayer and praise, and punishment, if need 
be, to overcome his faults ; but he shall not be 
drummed out of the ranks on account of them. 
We, his elders, are cross and careless. We tell 
lies, and we are selfish and impatient and in- 
considerate; but we account ourselves Chris- 
tians for all that. Shall we be harder on the 
little men and women, who stand in their little 
places and do deeds of heroism in the way of 
self-culture and repression of bad habits, who 
make little martyrs of themselves, and become 
little saints over their dolls and hoops and 



124 NUKSEEY NOONINGS. 

tarts ? " Take heed that ye despise not one of 
these little ones; for I say unto you that in 
heaven their angels do always behold the face 
of my Father which is in heaven." 

We should naturally suppose that the claims 
of God upon man would be expressed in terms 
as sensible, simple, and intelligible as those 
which embody any earthly duty. It requires 
a certain degree of intellect to be a statesman, 
a lawyer, a tradesman, a teacher, a farmer, a 
mechanic. But all men are not required to 
be lawyers or mechanics. There are many 
men, women, and children whose duties range 
downward in simplicity, till they almost reach 
the level of the poet's little maiden, who 

"Knew no sterner duty 
Than to give caresses." 

But no man lives so low as not to owe obliga- 
tion to his Maker. So soon as the first divine 
ray glimmers into the little heart, so soon 
should that heart open to its shining. Relig- 
ion is universal in its demands. All need to 



THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. 125 

be bound each day anew and afresh to their 
Creator, their Preserver, their bountiful Bene- 
factor. 

We should infer, therefore, that the divine 
claims would be presented so plainly that all 
could understand them — not simply ministers 
and lawyers and men skilled in language and 
philosophy, but the unlearned and the un- 
stable. 

It seems to me that they are so ; but that we 
overlay them with our many comments and 
deductions and directions, till their clearness 
is shrouded in obscurity. God in the Holy 
Bible, in the human heart, in nature, and in 
society reveals to us his will with great direct- 
ness and distinctness ; but we are very apt to 
make the Word of God of none effect by our 
traditions, and his logic equally inconsequent 
by our prejudices. The divine Word is not 
nearly so hard to understand as the human 
words that are written in explanation of it. 

A paragraph clipped from a religious pa- 



126 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

per, under the heading " I'm lost ! I'm lost !" 
explains that " this exclamation was overheard, 
lately, by a pastor as he entered the chamber 
of a Sunday -school boy, thirteen years old, who 
had been suddenly taken ill and pronounced 
by his physician irrecoverable. He had, as 
others, been taught his duty, and the fond in- 
vitations and solemn expostulations of the dear 
Redeemer; but, under the delusion that there 
was time enough for repentance, he had lived 
regardless, until, thus unexpectedly cast upon 
his death-bed, he was alarmed with the con- 
sciousness that ' the harvest was past, the sum- 
mer was ended,' and he was not saved ! The 
pastor prayed, and tried to impress him with 
the love of Jesus ; and he, endeavoring to grasp 
it as the drowning person catches at an ob- 
ject, appeared to take comfort. But oh ! how 
earnestly he exhorted father, grandfather, and 
brothers not to delay repentance ! "Whether 
he obtained saving grace or not will be known 
at the ' dread tribunal,' " 



THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. 127 

Such a story as this, so far from inspiring 
one with any sense of greater responsibility or 
more solemn urgency, rather arouses a certain 
indignation against those whose teachings can 
inflict such anguish upon a child. It is not so 
much the parents who are to blame. Perhaps 
no one is to be severely blamed for willful 
perversion of the truth or malice toward the 
helpless. But surely those who, no doubt 
conscientiously, take it upon themselves to be 
expounders of truth, ought to be thoughtful 
enough and real enough to give us at least a 
common-sense view of common events. 

Among all our teachers and preachers, in 
pulpit and press, is there nobody to tell us that 
the distress of this poor little boy was no indi- 
cation of the truth of the doctrine which dis- 
tressed him ? His agony had no bearing what- 
ever upon his fate, and little upon his charac- 
ter. It did not signify that he was lost, or 
that he was a sinner ; but only that he had 
been trained to believe that, unless he went 



128 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

through a certain definite moral or mental 
process, of which probably the poor little fel- 
low had but the most vague conception, he 
would suffer inconceivable torment forever. 
The state of mind of a person on his death-bed 
is significant, in a certain measure, of his char- 
acter, largely of his temperament, his train- 
ing, and his beliefs ; but it is no trustworthy 
witness of abstract truth. A man, devout, spir- 
itual, sweet, is consoled by the promises of the 
Gospel, which in health was his meat day and 
night. A man who never cared for Christ, 
but whose chief aim was to accumulate prop- 
erty, is comforted by the thought of the im- 
mense fortune he leaves behind him, and dies 
as peacefully and calmly as his Christian 
brother. If the experience of the first is a 
proof of the truth of the Gospel, the experi- 
ence of the second is a proof of the excellence 
of gain as the guide of life. A religious news- 
paper lately told of a man who had been un- 
der strong convictions of sin, but who had re- 



THE CHILDEEN OF THE CHURCH. 129 

sisted the call to repentance, until suddenly his 
agitation and anxiety subsided into a strange 
calm that was not peace. He felt that the 
Holy Spirit had ceased to strive with him, 
that he was given over to eternal death ; but 
kept on the even tenor of his way, wuthout 
hope, yet without tumultuous fear. After 
several years his mood changed, and he be- 
came a Christian. Now if at any time be- 
tween the advent and the disappearance of 
this sudden calm despair this man had met a 
swift death, he would have been considered 
lost by all who were acquainted with his pe- 
culiar case. It would have been said that he 
resisted the Spirit, and on such a date the 
Spirit departed from him forever, and his 
doom was sealed. But as he lived, there was 
space to show that for all those years even the 
man's own opinion of himself was wrong. He 
was not doomed to eternal death. The Spirit- 
had not given up striving with him. This lit- 
tle bov on his death-bed was no more sure 
it 

I 



130 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

that he was lost than the strong man in his 
strength. But the strong man was saved in 
his despair, and the little boy was not lost for 
his. 

Observe, it is nowhere implied that this boy 
was a bad boy. He was a Sunday - school 
scholar ; he was certainly in a degree unself- 
ish, for, though fearing the w T orst fate for him- 
self, he was eager that his friends should es- 
cape it. He was docile ; he accepted with pa- 
thetic, unquestioning trust the doctrines which 
had been delivered to him, even though they 
consigned him to the pains of hell forever. 
All that is alleged against him is that he had 
lived regardless of repentance. But he was 
thirteen years old. Look at a boy thirteen 
years old. How full of adventure and experi- 
ment he is ! how ambitious, how resolute, how 
little introspective, and of his little introspec- 
tion how shy and reticent ! Preach to such a 
boy our vague metaphysical ecclesiastical re- 
pentance, and what does he know about it all 



THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. 131 

when vou are through ? He knows what bit- 
ter regret for a mean act is ; he knows the 
poignancy of disappointment and the shame 
of failure. With the fashions and passions of 
his boy- world he is familiar ; but when you 
involve yourself in clouds, and talk to him in 
abstract cloud-language, your words are as idle 
tales. I believe that many conscientious chil- 
dren are more pained and bewildered than 
benefited by the well-meant but indefinite and 
terrifying teachings of their elders. They feel 
that a dreadful doom impends, which they 
know not how to escape. To be truthful, 
kind, obedient, avails them nothing ; there 
must be some inward change, some subjective 
mental process, which they can neither com- 
pass nor comprehend. Either they give in to 
it, and grow morbid and timid, and suffer un- 
known agonies of apprehension, or they throw 
it off, and undergo a hardening process, by 
which they become impervious alike to truth 
and error. 



132 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

It is of little use to preach to children sor- 
row for sin. If they can be made to feel sor- 
ry for sins, it is all we have a right to expect. 
If we believe that God is their Father, why not 
believe that he acts on fatherly principles ? 
We know very little about the future ; but we 
know of a surety that honor and honesty and 
truth and love are the best possessions in this 
world, and they can not harm us in the next. 
Why should not a child be taught that his 
Father in heaven wants of him just what his 
father on earth wants — that he should learn 
his lessons, and be polite to his teachers, and 
fair in his games, and dutiful to his parents, 
and friendly to all; that repentance means 
only that he should not exult in wrong-doing, 
but regret it and try to do so no more, and 
make it the rule and study of his life to do 
the upright, the just, the high-minded thing, 
instead of the doubtful and despicable one? 
How can he love God, whom he hath not seen, 
except through the friends whom lie hath seen ? 



THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. 133 

Why did God devise this most intricate and 
elaborate scheme of the human family, but for 
the express purpose of leading the rude, igno- 
rant soul with sweet, slow steps, through all the 
gradations of animal instincts and human loves 
up to his own infinite love ? Fathers and 
mothers, teachers and preachers, can clear the 
way for his inexperienced feet by simply giv- 
ing him true ideas of his position, of the rela- 
tion in which he stands to his Creator, of the 
entire, the rational friendliness and sympathy 
with which his Maker regards him. Or they 
can confuse and confound him with their ab- 
stractions and their inconsequences. It is dif- 
ficult to be angry, for the sword pierces through 
their own souls also. It is difficult not to be 
angry, for the unspeakable and immeasurable 
woe is caused by the perversion of truth in 
those whose duty it is to present truth. 



134 NURSERY NOONINGS. 



VI. 

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM THE 
YOUNG REPUBLIC. 

Children are no doubt tiresome to people 
who have the care of them, but irresponsible 
association with children is a never -ceasing 
interest and delight. To sit alone in the park 
and study the different groups of little ones 
playing about you is at once employment and 
enjoyment. The flossy, flowing hair, the Van- 
dyke collars, the dainty, diminutive petticoats, 
the broad sashes, the Tyrolese hats, the shape- 
ly legs, the free, visible motions, the infinite 
flashing of vivid colors — here is a little pictur- 
esque world within the world, not less real 
and far more accessible than the outer world 
which infolds it. Have the mothers given too 
much time to tucks and trimmings ? I dare 
say they have, the vain, fond, silly mothers, 



LESSONS FROM THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. 135 

but they have made a pretty picture after all. 
And if the painter is praised who spends his 
time in tricking out canvas with color and 
contour to delight the eye and inthrall the 
heart, shall the mother be harshly blamed 
even if she trim the midnight lamp to deck 
with freshness and softness and brightness that 
little living statue, rounded and rosy, as fair 
and pure and sweet as if it had been carved 
from vitalized marble ? ' 

True, this picture is for a day, and the paint- 
ing and the sculpture are for all time. But so 
the flowers spring as gracefully outlined, as 
exquisitely tinted, as lavishly dowered with 
the sweet mystery and ministry of scents, as 
if they were not to yield up their lovely life in 
a night. All the year waits on one moment 
of superb and supreme beauty. Nay, a hun- 
dred years serve steadfastly for one brief blos- 
soming, and we do not chide Nature for the 
lavish outlay, but admire her patience and ap- 
plaud her accomplishment. The picturesque 



136 NURSEKY NOONINGS. 

childhood passes so swiftly, and the bright col- 
ors must be subdued and the charming out- 
lines hidden — we may pity if we must, but not 
too severely censure the poetry, the love of art, 
the refinement and delicacy, which find expres- 
sion while they may in a child's dress. 

And if the heavens are shrouded as on this 
bitter spring day, and the air is full of invisi- 
ble ice, what substitute for sunshine is so bright 
as the faces and the voices of the eager, busy 
children ? You sit by the glowing grate with 
an entertaining book, but "keeping an eye 
out," yes, and an ear too, for the microcosm in 
the other corner. And if you can but furnish 
a little wisdom of your own, you will find as 
much wisdom there as in any book. There, 
in little, all the large world reveals itself. 
There the future is forecast. The present 
holds the germ of all that is to be. It wants 
only the seeing eye. Life is strictly logical, 
but we fail to frame the syllogisms, and stand 
astonished at the conclusions. All the same 
they are conclusions, and not caprices. 



LESSONS FEOM THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. 137 

There are many arrangements in the world 
that we can not understand ; but involuntarily 
watching the children at their play, we can 
readily see why they are arranged in groups, 
and not consigned to solitary education. It 
is not alone for enjoyment, but for training. 
Parents do their part, but they can not do the 
whole. Children must themselves complement 
their own development. Even the defects of 
parental training may be made up by the in- 
evitable trituration of these atoms. The par- 
ents are strong and self-possessed, protecting 
and just and friendly ; but when the child 
goes out into the world he will find it indif- 
ferent, unjust, reckless. How can he bear the 
transition from the warm atmosphere of home 
to the cool, not to say biting airs of this new 
sphere? But the wise, self -restrained, help- 
ing adults do not constitute all of home. 
Again and again comes a little baby, more 
helpless, ignorant, appealing than the helpless, 
ignorant, and appealing child. The three-year- 



138 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

old immediately constitutes herself a Mother 
Superior to the three-day-old. The same love- 
ly, helpful traits which she calls forth in her 
parents the baby calls forth in her. Children 
are to each other what the outside world is to 
their parents. Heedless, headlong children 
become careful and cautious when the baby 
wanders into their play-ground. The boy who 
howls and storms and raves because his moth- 
er will not yield to his wish and whim, will 
himself yield to the whims of the tiny sister 
left awhile in his charge, and coax and ca- 
jole, not only with marvelous patience, but 
with a wisdom and a tact of which you had 
never suspected him to be capable. Chil- 
dren have an unconscious confidence in their 
parents and elders, and an unconscious and 
correct lack of confidence in their younger 
friends. They will be unreasonable with their 
parents, knowing that their parents will not be 
unrestrained in return ; but when little Peggy 
totters about among the infantile crockery, 



LESSONS FROM THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. 139 

they know it is of no use to thrust her out 
fiercely, because no shame will restrain her 
from pushing unearthly yells which will spoil 
their sport. So they check their impatience, 
lure her out lovingly, and learn the valuable 
art of self-government. 

Thank Heaven for the quarrels of children ! 
Thus they learn the balance of power before 
they leave the nursery. Perhaps his father 
will not allow Charley to be punished, but if 
he strike Kitty, Kitty strikes back, and with 
blind fury. So he learns to curb his tempers 
in spite of his father. The trouble is that par- 
ents too often interfere when it would be much 
better to leave the children to fight it out. But 
Charley is stronger than Kitty, and hurts her. 
True, but it is very important that Kitty should 
learn to measure herself, and to know that if 
she fling herself rashly against a superior 
power she w r ill be beaten. Beyond keeping a 
general supervision of eyes and bones, let us 
not exercise too close a watch. The outcry 



140 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

and clamor are not soothing or musical consid- 
ered merely as sounds, but when you classify 
them as the friction of souls striving to adjust 
themselves to the relations of life, they are far 
from annoying. Let the children alone. The 
brother's impatience may better discipline the 
offender than the father's patience. The sis- 
ter's quick, effective resentment is more like 
the world's ways than the mother's loving en- 
durance. The slap that promptly follows en- 
croachment is a good practical lesson in human 
rights. Be not too hasty to forbid the little 
children to beat and box and tease and scold 
and scratch each other into a respect for own- 
ership, for sensitiveness, into a dignified self- 
control, and even, at length, into a profound 
and universal benevolence. 

An absolute monarchy may give more social 
order, but a republic makes stronger men and 
women for citizens. 

When young King Philip — I refer now not 
to him of Pokanoket, Prince of the Warn pa- 



LESSONS FEOM THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. 141 

noags, son of our old friend Massasoit, but to 
Philip, iny king — when this youthful monarch 
put on his first jacket and trousers he signal- 
ized his sovereignty by striking an attitude. 
Out went his feet as widely apart as his small 
legs could conveniently allow, deep went his 
lordly hands into his diminutive but sufficient 
pockets, and up tossed his shining head, as 
bright and fine and yellow with its lustrous 
hair as the silken summer maize. So there he 
stood — and, caught by the cunning sun, there 
he still stands, a demure little mockery of a 
man, a caricature of strength and dominion, a 
puny baby, but mighty with the foreshadow- 
ings of fate — not ridiculous, because altogeth- 
er transparent and innocent, and because al- 
together certain in his promise. 

For the king will never go back again under 
petticoat government. Once a boy, always a 
boy, until he is, better still, a man. ISTo drag- 
gling of draperies for him through rain or hail, 
or fire or snow. No beating against the wind 



142 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

with sails full spread. He goes through life 
close reefed, all the hinderances of friction re- 
duced to their lowest terms. He runs the race 
without carrying weight. He rejoices in he 
knows not what. It is a greater freedom than 
he comprehends. 

But look you, my lord, power brings duty. 
We shall expect you to use your freedom. 
What avails that you are girded for the race, 
armed for the fight, if you fail in the one or 
flee from the other? Dress is a significant, 
not a merely capricious fact. From time to 
time benevolent men and enterprising women 
have attempted to change national customs and 
costumes, and here and there a brave Bloomer 
has crooked the pregnant hinges of the knee 
before the public gaze ; but in vain. No con- 
fessed convenience, no considerations of health 
even, have been able to banish or materially to 
modify the flowing female drapery. It is felt 
to be not simply female, but feminine, and 
even now it is a hand-to-hand conflict between 



LESSONS FROM. THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. 143 

skirts that "just clear the ground" and skirts 
that drag their slow lengths over it. A mer- 
ciful Providence save us from being conquered 
by the last alternative! — though to any per- 
son who sees a. dress trailing over the pave- 
ments, with its intricate pleats and puffings 
well grimed, its protecting wigan flounce gray 
with dirt, or, as these eyes have seen, torn off: 
and hopping behind, half a yard of narrow 
rag, a train not provided for in any fashion 
plate — to such, I say, it might seem as if Prov- 
idence had no call to interfere. We might pro- 
vide against this degrading display and this un- 
tidy consciousness by our own common-sense. 
But obstinate adherence to an inconvenient 
dress means something. Men have not so 
clung to it. Men by whole nations and whole 
races have cast aside the flowing folds which 
women not only retain but multiply. Visiting 
lately in China, I was struck anew by the sim- 
ilarity between the dresses of our male and 
female friends. Our host was equipped in a 



144 NUKSEKY NOONINGS. 

short, loose black satin sack and petticoat. His 
queue was less luxuriant than the ladies' hair, 
and his stout English boots beneath his petti- 
coat, unlike little mice, much more like very 
large rats, stole in and out. His raiment was 
plain, whereas the silk robes of his family were 
rich and varied in color, and heavy with gay 
and golden embroidery. Otherwise their dress- 
es were generally the same. Doubtless the 
Chinese eye saw a great difference in cut and 
fit, but to me the fullness, the length, the out- 
line were one. The resemblance was far great-. 
er than the difference. 

Here, then, we have a female dress more 
comfortable than our own — loose, light, and not 
ungraceful ; as modest as our own, as rich as 
our own, far more permanent, and necessarily 
more economical. Such a dress as this must 
give women greater freedom of motion, and 
must be therefore more conducive to health. 
It must require far less time and thought in its 
construction, and therefore leaves the mind at 



LESSONS FROM THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. 145 

liberty to range in other fields. The man's 
dress, on the contrary, is less adapted to work 
than the English male dress. The Celestial 
gentleman would seem to be as much ham- 
pered by his clothes as the Celestial lady. 
While relinquishing beauty, he has not gain- 
ed freedom. The husband is really worse off 
than his wife. 

Our international diversities go further than 
this. Our American women do not live too 
much in the open air ; but, if we may accept 
the truth of history and tradition, they are in 
it far more than the Chinese women. They 
are not very accurate or profound scholars, 
but there is among them more intellectual 
depth and activity, it is generally believed, 
than among Chinese women. That is, the dress 
which we all agree is the most sensible and 
comfortable, and which some of us are ready 
to fight for, and a faithful few to suffer mar- 
tyrdom on account of — the dress which gives 
most scope to mind and body — is worn by a 
K 



146 NURSEKY NOONINGS. 

race proverbially circumscribed in both ; while 
the most impeding and absorbing dress ever 
devised is worn by a race of women who stand 
relatively higher than any other on earth. 

There are ever so many morals fluttering 
from this fact as naturally as the tail from a 
kite. But as space and time are limited, sup- 
pose we confine ourselves to one. It may not 
be the right one, but I should like to see some 
person bring forward a better. 

The spontaneous and increasing difference 
between the male and female dress marks the 
growth of a nation in higher civilization, and 
points to the different work of man and wom- 
an. In the beginning of things there is a gen- 
eral commingling, a chaos of individualities 
and offices. "Woman is but an inferior sort of 
man, always more weak, sometimes more beau- 
tiful. The distinctions of nature are imperi- 
ous, but have no significance beyond their ex- 
istence. Women do pretty much the same 
work as men, and wear pretty much the same 



LESSONS FKOM THE YOUNG KEPUBLIC. 147 

dress. At the worst they are low, at the best 
they are not high. But rising in the scale, the 
dividing line defines itself more and more 
sharply. The man's world evolves itself, rough 
and palpable, from the chaos ; the woman's 
world, too, floats into the finer light, less pal- 
pable, but not less real. For his world and 
work the man folds away his delaying dra- 
peries, and arrays himself in compact and en- 
during substance ; for her world the woman as 
instinctively and unerringly wraps herself in 
intricacy, voluminousness, and beauty — unerr- 
ingly, because she is none the less accoutred 
for her w r orld in being encumbered for his. 
The higher the man, the higher the nation, the 
higher the civilization — the more he takes upon 
his own brawny shoulders the pioneer toil, and 
reserves her for the secondary, the social, the 
invisible, the all-pervading. 

So, dear lady, though your dress may be a 
little in advance of your life, though you may 
have put on the attire of the future while yet 



148 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

under the yoke of the lingering and brutal 
past, take courage. You suffer and are hin- 
dered, but you are in the line of promotion. 
Let Philip your king rejoice in his propria 
quce maribus, for that way conflict and vic- 
tory lie for him. But when your clean soul is 
vexed that you can not preserve your spot- 
less dress for much sweeping and dusting and 
dish - washing, rejoice over the coming wom- 
an, whose feet are already beautiful upon the 
mountains, and whose sole house -cleaning 
shall be to keep the chambers of the heart 
— all hearts — pure and fresh and fragrant. 

When Truth says, confidently, "Work" — 
meaning physical labor — " is not for women," 
Incredulity replies, Yankee -like, "How are 
you going to help it ?" and Truth, being truth- 
ful, must reply, "I don't know;" but, just the 
same, she goes on, calm and confident, singing 
her eternal song, "For woman tranquillity, 
leisure, large spheres, and social and mental 
scope." 



LESSONS FROM THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. 14:9 

There is a great deal to be done, and, alas ! 
a great deal to be suffered, before those larger 
spheres swing into reach ; but much is gained 
if women, while toiling and moiling in the 
swamp-lands of the lower world, can hear far 
off their majestic music, or even know that 
somewhere in the circling heavens they are 
sweeping on to sure attainment. Work, work, 
work — from weary chime to chime — but, all 
the same, the true life is to live not according 
to your necessities, but according to your aspi- 
rations; to live not in constant repression, but 
in constant growth ; to work not by will, but 
by instinct; to do what you must, not from 
outward force, but inward fervor. 

It is no argument against success that you 
see not how it is to be accomplished. Settle 
what success is to be, and then work up to it. 
The children are brimful of lessons in the way 
to do it. Star-flower is the most useless little 
blossom that ever opened, and no queen is 
more loyally attended. Baby-in-breeches never 



150 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

earned a pinch of salt, yet he is the very salt 
of the earth. When Star-flower presents her- 
self at the door, blooming from her bath, her 
face radiates smiles over all the universe at 
the welcome she is going to receive, although 
not a word is spoken, nor perhaps a look cast 
in her direction. Her confident soul plucks 
its triumph beforehand. She assumes fidelity 
and homage, and is never disappointed. She 
has no self-conceit ; is not concerned with the 
impression she produces ; is intent only on ac- 
complishing her objects. What if her single- 
mindedness and simple faith could go on 
through life ? What if she could rise upon 
the world each morning, as smiling, as un- 
daunted, as straightforward, as unsuspecting ? 
What if she could always be content to be, 
and leave to the hard, striving, masculine 
w T orld the task to know T ? 

Or look again : the strong man armed 
comes into the room, and Little Breeches, 
aw T are what such shoulders w T ere made for, 



LESSONS FROM THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. 151 

climbs by short and easy stages to a seat 
thereon, and rides aloft in triumphant silence. 
Star-flower, peering amid the forbidden ruins 
of the overturned work-basket, suddenly catch- 
es a glimpse of the performance, and immedi- 
ately her soul rises above rubbish; by vigor- 
ous use of her two little hands, and an em- 
phatic double back-action, she gains her two 
little feet, trots out to front the centaur, 
stretches up her chubby arms and steepest tip- 
toes, and with an inarticulate but most signif- 
icant outcry of mingled entreaty and imperi- 
ousness, claims her right to the other shoulder. 
Perched on the desired summit, peace settles 
on her brow, joy shines in her eyes, and rid- 
ing up and down beneath the chandeliers, she 
coos out an Io triwrvphe as soft and sweet as 
the gurgling of a hidden brook in the leafy 
woods of June. 

That is all she wants — her share of the 
goods of life. She claims no pre-eminence, 
only her portion. When Little Breeches de- 



152 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

scends, she writhes spontaneously downward. 
When Little Breeches does not mount, the 
shoulders are free from her incursions. But 
the altitude and the freedom that please him, 
by that token please her, and with no thought 
of propriety, and no drawback from conse- 
quences, she asserts herself, and is not only 
justified but glorified. 

Now if Star-flower will but bloom into her 
womanhood, and glow through her woman- 
hood, on the same direct and simple principle, 
how fragrant will be the hedge -row where 
she springs ! Not submission, not aggression, 
neither self-surrender nor self-obtrusion, but 
clearness to see and quickness to claim, and 
resolution to secure and grace to compel, what 
is by divine right and human courtesy hers, 
and what it is to the world's enjoyment and 
advantage to award : for the whole house is 
brightened and bettered because Star-flower 
will have the other shoulder ! 

Will it make her selfish and exacting ? Is 



LESSONS FROM THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. 153 

it for a woman to be always withdrawing her- 
self to the centre of obscuration lest she be 
relegated thither by force of dislike? Why, 
look at Star-flower again. " Come to me, Star- 
flower — come to me!" says Little Breeches, 
standing across the room, and bending toward 
her with outstretched arms, all the command- 
ing sweetness of love in his tender voice ; and 
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever 
shall be, world without end, the little willful 
woman hears and heeds the tone of love, and 
speeds swiftly to the close-clasping arms of the 
little man, and all their joy bubbles up in 
merry, musical laughter. Submission, obedi- 
ence, duty, subordination — no, it is none of 
these; let not such things be once named 
among you, as becometh saints. It is some- 
thing better. It is spontaneity reaching far- 
ther toward the heavenly goal than duty can 
ever be spurred. Ah ! be sure, with all her 
ignorance, Star-flower knows what is what. 
She has never mapped out her course but by 



154: NURSERY NOONINGS. 

the divine instinct, as yet raiwarped; she 
knows when to impel and when to accord — 
and her following is all the dearer because 
she is not slow to lead. Perhaps when Star- 
flower grows a woman, the woman-world will 
be but little easier than now, but I think it 
will be that little easier. The only peace of 
the present is the fore-gleam of that tranquil 
future. There needs only to be the same rate 
of progress as in the past, and we can see that 
the millennium is not unattainable, even in this 
world. By the conquests of mechanical power 
many a burden has been lifted from both men 
and women. It is not a heroic, not a poetical, 
but it is a very effective way of overcoming 
the world. It is difficult to find romance in a 
cheese factory, but a cheese factory lightens 
the load on many a weary shoulder. When 
we look back and see how much used to be 
done in every house by one woman's hands 
that is now done in one house by many iron 
fingers, from how many forms of manual serv- 



LESSONS FROM THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. 155 

ice the poorest women are now freed, is it 
Quixotic to think that ingenuity is not yet ex- 
hausted ? Since man has already taken upon 
his own hand, still more upon his own brain, 
so much of the work that used to weigh upon 
women, is it idle to think that he will go on 
assuming, devising, combining, through the 
slow, swift years, till, silently, a revolution is 
accomplished, and without sound of hammer 
or axe, without so much as intent of recon- 
struction, but only by the instinctive working 
out of destiny — the man his, and the woman 
hers — behold, a new heaven and a new earth, 
wherein dwelleth righteousness ! 



156 NURSERY NOONINGS. 



VII. 

WHAT fiNEMY HATH DONE THIS? 

Some observing father in Boston has been 
circulating a petition asking that the Saturday 
session of the Latin School in that city be 
abolished, and finds himself at once set up as 
the standard-bearer of an army which is to 
rescue our children from the clutches of their 
oppressors. Vigorous pens are set in motion. 
All the horrors of overtasked brains, multi- 



plied lessons, too many hours in school, too 
many studies out of school, unventilated rooms, 
and premature disease and death are pointed 
out, and parents are called upon to rise in their 
might and demand a redress of all these griev- 
ances, or threaten a withdrawal of their chil- 
dren f l'om " your schools." 

The situation is grotesque, though the evil 
is as real as sin. Whose schools, pray, are 



WHAT ENEMY HATH DONE THIS? 157 

they from which the children are to be with- 
drawn in default of a reformation? Who 
prescribes the curriculum of study? Who 
appoints the school -hours? Who limits the 
vacations? Who builds the school - houses ? 
There would seem to be a vague notion afloat 
that the teacher is the absolute despot who is 
to be brought to terms by armed revolution. 
He it is who imposes tasks so severe as to 
soften the brains of his innocent charges, and 
who sucks all the oxygen out of the air be- 
fore he permits them to breathe it. He is the 
cruel, exacting, irresponsible tyrant, tramping 
to his goal over the brains of the helpless, 
bringing to naught the hopes of fond fathers, 
and paving the w T ay for paralysis and general 
idiocy. 

The evil itself can scarcely be exaggerated, 
especially as regards ventilation. There is 
probably not a well-ventilated school-house in 
the country. I have been in man} 7 , and I do 
not recollect one that was not repulsive with 



158 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

foul air. Enter the main hall during the 
morning exercises, and you may be sufficient- 
ly comfortable ; but go into a recitation-room 
during the latter half of the recitation hours 
and you are actually smitten by the noisome 
atmosphere. You instinctively breathe short- 
ly to avoid inhaling it. In this filthy bath the 
delicate lungs of delicate children are im- 
mersed and soaked and steeped, hour after 
hour, for days and months and years, till the 
nastiness is well incorporated into blood and 
brain and heart. 

And the parents do not care. The fault is 
wholly and solely with them. The teachers 
do every thing they can do to mitigate the 
evil. They open the ventilators; they open 
the windows, as far as draughts are permis- 
sible. At the close of each recitation they 
give the rooms as complete an airing as pos- 
sible. It is the parents who build school- 
houses and put their children into them. It 
is the parents who cram their children's lungs 



WHAT ENEMY HATH DONE THIS ? 159 

with the same old, used-up, spoiled air over 
and. over again. They do not object to it. 
They hear talk and make talk about fresh air, 
but they do not supply fresh, air. They would 
just as soon their children would breathe the 
foul as the fresh. If they wanted the pure 
air they would have it. They do not wash 
their children's faces in dirty water ; and clean 
air is more accessible than clean water. As 
they do not use it, the inference is that they 
do not want it. 

So of hours and terms and tasks — they all 
emanate from the parent. The school session 
is six hours long, when it should be no more 
than G.YG ; but not only is the teacher not re- 
sponsible for this, but let him advocate ear- 
nestly a reduction to five hours, and parents 
would say he did it for the sake of shirking 
the hour's work himself. They would think 
they were not getting their money's worth if 
school closed at four instead of five, or two in- 
stead of three. We want our children in the 



160 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

school-room six hours. When they are at school 
we feel that they are safe. We do not mind 
what they are breathing, but we know they are 
not roaming the street ; they are not drowning 
or fighting or running after a circus. They 
are taken care of. If you dismiss school at 
four, our duration of mental ease is shortened 
by an hour — and shall you indolent and easy- 
placed teachers have only five hours of work, 
while fathers and mothers bear the burden 
and heat of a never-ending day ? 

The course of studies is possibly a little 
more under the control of the teacher, but 
only a very little. So many years are given 
to the primary, so many to the grammar, so 
many to the high school. So many studies 
the father wishes his son to prosecute. The 
subdivision is as rigid as mathematics. The 
teacher is powerless. The parent is powerful. 
He can take out lessons or put in years. He 
can make his high -school course five years 
long instead of four, or he can dismiss a Ian- 



WHAT ENEMY HATH DONE THIS? 161 

.o-uasre or a science from the course. If he 
do not choose to do it, it is not the teacher's 
place to do it. Let the teacher attempt it, and 
he immediately lays himself open to the alle- 
gation of desiring to diminish his own work. 
It is his part to teach what he is appointed to 
teach, and if he paralyze the children's brains 
it is no affair of his. lie was put there to 
paralyze them. That is the way he earns his 
salary. When the farmer sends his grain to 
mill, the natural inference is that he wants it 
ground. 

It is comfortable to see people uncomforta- 
ble in this matter; but it is marvelous to see 
them angry with any one but themselves. 

We religious folk inveigh earnestly against 
the children's balls and parties in which you of 
the world indulge ; we go to the great hotels 
and see the little children decked in elaborate 
finery, and dancing and prancing through the 
vast rooms before gazing crowds at hours 
when they ought to be fast asleep in their 
L 



162 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

beds, and, thank Heaven, we mean to keep our 
little ones in the sheltered ways of home ! 

But what objectionable feature of children's 
balls was wanting in the series of Pilgrim Me- 
morial festivities not long ago held in Tremont 
Temple, Boston ? Late hours, line clothes, gaz- 
ing crowds, intense excitement, all were there; 
and the mothers were not there in a position 
to exercise constant care over the wild little 
creatures. When I alighted before the door, 
out almost upon the sidewalk rushed a little 
lady whom I knew to meet me, out into the 
midst of the crowd, out into the cold, dark 
night — a tiny thing scarcely ten years old, 
in flimsy white gown and thin slippers, un- 
shawled, bare-headed, unattended except by a 
girl of her own age. Half crazy with excite- 
ment, the little chits were curveting from 
room to room, breathless and eager, unable to 
be quiet, their nearest approach to standing 
still a nervous hopping and skipping. Pres- 
ently they w T ere marshaled, and indeed it 



WHAT ENEMY HATH DONE THIS? 163 

was a pretty sight ! They fluttered into their 
places, tier above tier of white-robed girls ris- 
ing before us like a bank of lilies ; and over 
against them the contrasting shadow of sober- 
hued boys ; and behind, and far above all, an 
arched throne occupied by a single little girl, 
who, I suppose, represented Liberty, or some 
such virtuous abstraction, and who kept one in 
constant fear that she would drop asleep and 
fall off. Then they sang, and their fresh young 
voices thrilled out on the air, and filled the 
great hall with melody. They rose, and it 
was like the bursting of a bud into broad 
white blossom. They waved suddenly their 
hidden flags, and the lily bank was alive with 
color. Faith, Hope, and Charity, Justice and 
Peace, and all the United States, grouped 
themselves in their appointed places, and sang 
their appointed songs; and so the Pilgrims 
were memorialized. 

And there were evening concerts and mat- 
inees, and for these I do not know how many 



104: NURSERY NOONINGS. 

rehearsals. A large number of the children 
were from neighboring towns, and could scarce- 
ly have reached home before eleven o'clock. 
If they were like one little lady, they were 
not asleep before twelve; and school began 
next day at nine, as usual. And was it for 
this, O God, beneath thy guiding hand, our 
exiled fathers crossed the sea ? 

Yet people who would on no account send 
their children to dancing-school let them out 
to these concerts ; and religious papers, that 
are the first to condemn the frivolities of fash- 
ionable mammas, were the first to denounce 
the Boston public for not filling the Temple 
to witness this sacrifice of the lambs. 

If it were not too serious, it would be gro- 
tesque. When "the fashionable mother" takes 
her little one to the ball-room, and sets her 
spinning, she honestly gives her of her best. 
She starts her in the life which she herself 
most values, for the prizes which herself holds 
highest. But we Pilgrims profess to scout all 



WHAT ENEMY HATH DONE THIS ? 165 

that. We deprecate the show, the admira- 
tion, the absorption, as the worst things for 
our children. Yet here we are deliberately 
bringing it all upon them. We are farming 
out their youth, their innocence, their fresh, 
winsome beauty, for paper 'currency — children 
fifty cents, reserved seats one dollar. Is not 
that worse than the fashionable mother ? She, 
at least, does not sell the gift of God for mon- 
ey. If it is right to keep children up till 
midnight, to show them off before promiscu- 
ous assemblies, to set them on fire with excite- 
ment, what difference does it make whether 
we use their toes or their tongues ? What 
difference does it make whether it is in the 
Tremont Temple or in the Ocean House par- 
lors ? If it is right, let ns say no more about 
it. If it is wrong, does the building of a Con- 
gregational house with the proceeds make it 
right ? We may have been mistaken hitherto 
in our abjurations and adjurations; but if we 
were not, the adoption of such a mode of 



166 NURSEKY NOONINGS. 

church -building is very ranch like laying the 
foundations of Jericho in the blood of our first- 
born. 

If, when these little goddesses of Liberty 
and Hope and Charity grow to woman's es- 
tate, they choose to go upon the stage in 
dresses as thin and short as they wore at this 
Pilgrim opera, and sing drinking-songs in- 
stead of greeting- songs, and enact the "Bo- 
hemian Girl" instead of the United States, 
their fathers and mothers may not be. able to 
hinder them. But to thrust them upon the 
stage in their tender years — to train them for 
public performances, and feed them with pub- 
lic applause — is a thing which nobody but 
their parents can do, and for which their par- 
ents, aided and abetted, but not governed, by 
the religious press, are alone responsible. 

I do not believe that one child in ten thou- 
sand is injured by too close attention to his 
studies. The injury comes simply from dissi- 
pation ; from dissipation not connected with 



WHAT ENEMY HATH DONE THIS ? 167 

but hostile to his studies; not suggested but 
discountenanced by the teachers, and permit- 
ted by the parents. If children sleep and eat 
and breathe and play rightly, taking their 
books home from school will not hurt them. 
If they do not, leaving the books at school 
will not help them. A girl is no more harm- 
ed by studying her multiplication -table till 
nine than she is by singing in a public concert- 
room for charity till eleven. 

One who was reproached with attempting 
to forward a benevolent object by turning the 
children into beggars as well as public per- 
formers, replied, in substance, " We do noth- 
ing of the sort; we simply urge the children 
to give us their own earnings, and such small 
contributions as they may solicit from their 
parents and casual visitors." 

If there were no begging but street begging, 
the charge is disproved ; but begging in the 
house is far worse than begging out of it. 
The little, shivering, hungry, forlorn wretch 



168 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

who timidly liolds out liis hat at the street 
crossings, or the still more common little 
wretch who has added to his poverty hypoc- 
risy, who follows you into the railroad sta- 
tion, and in an exaggerated whine asks you 
for money to buy a loaf of bread for his sick 
mother — these have the dire and awful ex- 
cuse of hunger. Famine is a foe to delicacy, 
and rags chill self-respect to death. But why 
should we turn to, and with malice afore- 
thought, for a far-oif and perhaps shadowy 
good, destroy the modesty and blunt the sense 
of propriety of our own little, plump, rosy, 
healthy lads and lasses ? The money can by 
no means do good enough to atone for the 
harm done to the child by enjoining or per- 
mitting a child to ask money of his father's 
visitors, or of any outside person, for any pur- 
pose whatever. There is bluntness enough in 
our social relations, Heaven knows. We lift 
our standard of duty over other people's heads, 
dictate to them their benevolence, their relig- 



WHAT ENEMY HATH. DONE THIS? 169 

ion, and the size of their families; but the 
next generation will surpass us in our imperti- 
nence if we thus train them up to it from 
their tender years. What is improper in 
grown people is grotesquely improper in chil- 
dren. And it is always improper and imperti- 
nent for one person to urge another to bestow 
in charity. If a case of destitution be brought 
to the knowledge of one man, he may lay it 
before others, and present any plan for assist- 
ance that he may have formed ; but that is all. 
He is not to solicit alms. When persons know 
the suffering, the matter lies in their hands 
alone. For what they do or do not they alone 
are responsible. Still less for large organized 
charities should men solicit contributions. Let 
them give what publicity they choose to their 
objects and methods; let ministers preach ser- 
mons explanatory and exhortatory if they will; 
but let all the rest be left to the action of in- 
dividuals. For convenience an agent may be 
appointed to receive what people have to be- 



170 NTJKSERY NOONINGS. 

stow; but the man who comes to my house 
and urges me to give fifty dollars, or five dol- 
lars, or fifty cents, to any body or any thing, 
is impertinent, and if I had not better manners 
than he I should tell him so. Happily the art 
of printing has been invented for the purpose 
of giving us a chance to say behind people's 
backs what we will not say to their faces. To 
put the facts on the lowest ground, he does not 
know what is my income nor what are my 
expenses, and he has, therefore, no possible 
means of knowing what I am able to give, or 
whether I can give any thing. Moreover, I 
may not have faith in his aims, his society, or 
himself ; but, of course, I do not wish to tell 
him so, though, if he annoy me overmuch, 
there is danger that I shall, and with some 
heat. But worse than this, by the very act of 
urging me to charity, he becomes offensive. 
He puts himself on a plane above me ; he as- 
sumes that I will not do what I ought unless 
he, with his superior goodness, urge me to it 



WHAT ENEMY HATH DONE THIS ? 171 

— which may all be true, but a truth which it 
is not his province to preach. 

But what will oar charities come to, cry the 
benevolent, if we are to be so squeamish? 
What shall we come to if we are not so 
squeamish is quite as important a question. 
If the heathen Chinee can not become Chris- 
tian without Christians becoming busybodies 
in other men's matters, why, Christianity has 
two sides. If Christians do not care enough 
about their Gospel and their fellows to send 
the one to the other, the true way is to make 
them better Christians, not work upon their 
pride or their vanity, and make them send the 
Gospel anyhow. Let not your left hand know 
what your right hand doeth, says Christ, as 
clear as crystal; and we obey his injunction 
by sending around a subscription-paper with 
all the names and gifts in black and white — 
" John Doe, twenty dollars ; Eichard Eoe, fif- 
teen dollars" — and the excuse is that you. 
would not get half as much any other way; 



172 NUKSEEY NOONINGS. 

that is, Christians will not give for love half 
as much as they will give for shame or show. 
If this were so, would it not be well to leave 
the heathen Chinee, and turn our guns upon 
ourselves ? 

We greatly need more delicacy, more knowl- 
edge of limitations, more sense of propriety, 
more respect for the rights and the individual- 
ity of others. If we wish to build a memorial 
hall, and send an agent around with a sub- 
scription-paper, his object ought not to be to 
make as many people give as much as pos- 
sible, but, primarily, to save people the trouble 
of carrying their contributions to head-quar- 
ters ; and, secondarily, to spare them any pos- 
sible pain or embarrassment in not making a 
contribution. The best agent is not the one 
who collects the most money, but the one who 
leaves in the hearts of those he has visited the 
strongest conviction that benevolence is gentle, 
considerate, courteous. When benevolence at- 
tempts to pry into your affairs, or to override 



WHAT ENEMY HATH DONE THIS % ITS 

your decisions, or to take advantage of your 
position, or in any way to dictate your course, 
you feel inclined to close your purse-strings 
and open your door. 

That little children should not only be per- 
mitted but instructed to levy contributions on 
their parents' visitors — who can not do so un- 
gracious a thing as to refuse, no matter what 
their sentiments or opinions may be — shows a 
marvelous misunderstanding or perversion of 
the laws of politeness and hospitality, and a 
marvelous ignorance of or indifference to the 
delicacy of a child's nature. 



174 NURSERY NOONINGS. 



VIIL 

DISCIPLINING CHILDREN. 

My friend Heraclitus, lover of children, is 
much concerned in mind at the disappearance 
of discipline from the American nursery. He 
sees in the child -world precocity, fun, slang, 
swearing, natural naughtiness, little goodness 
but that resulting from natural impulses, do- 
cile papas and mammas, who either rule by 
love or let ruling alone altogether. He la- 
ments exceedingly that Miss Edgeworth is out 
of date, and avers that she would turn pale at 
our notions of instruction if she w T ere not, 
chiefly, it appears, because " nobody is unpleas- 
antly disciplined ;" and he mournfully predicts 
as the result of our "false coddling" that the 
poor little coddled boy will rest satisfied w T ith 
his slipshod good-nature and his bad-breeding, 



DISCIPLINING CHILDKEN. 175 

and will not care a fig for such superfluities 
as discipline, endurance, modesty, and rever- 
ence. 

To illustrate his position and prove his as- 
sertions, my friend brings forward a juvenile 
story wherein a little girl-visitor insists on hav- 
ing her own question answered before she will 
answer a question put to her, to the amuse- 
ment of her lady - hostess. This Heraclitus 
considers to be a lesson in those bad manners 
so notorious in American children. But is it 
a lesson in bad manners to children % Is it 
not rather a lesson in good manners to the 
children's mothers ? What would you have ? 
The little girl was not the lady's child, but a 
visitor. Was it a case where "discipline" 
could be properly applied ? Whoever studies, 
with love and sympathy, the ways of children, 
knows that Dr. Franklin and all the forefa- 
thers were not more jealous of their rights, 
more indignant at usurped authority, than are 
children in the nursery. No child of ordi- 



176 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

nary sense and spirit but would resent disci- 
pline or reproof administered by any one but 
its legal rulers. And the children are right, 
notorious bad manners though it be. The 
rules of polite society apply to children just as 
radically as to adults. Grown people are oft- 
en in society called upon to suppress their 
own feelings, sometimes to sacrifice their own 
tastes, sometimes to soften the expression of 
their own principles, out of regard to the exi- 
gencies of politeness and peace. It is just as 
true in our intercourse with children. You 
are no more required to tell a child -guest 
what you think of him, what is wrong or im- 
polite in his behavior, than you are required 
to tell an adult guest. A child's feelings are 
as sensitive as a man's, and his power of self- 
defense far weaker. He will gradually learn 
of himself to correct his own impoliteness, but 
the interference of a foreign hand may inflict 
a life-long wound. It is a mistake to suppose 
that every person is under bonds immediately 



DISCIPLINING CHILDREN. 177 

to correct every fault in every child lie sees. 
Many faults he will amend of his own accord, 
put of pride and love and self-respect. Leave 
him alone. There is no surer way to build up 
a child's self-respect than to pay him your 
own ; there is no better way to teach him 
good manners than to practice good manners 
toward him. 

If Pleraclitus, lover of children, practice his 
own principles, he is an object for commisera- 
tion. When he sits at the tables of his friends, 
and reproves Mary for soiling the table-cloth, 
and sends Fred into a corner for thumping 
Harry, and rebukes Susy because her hair is 
not tidy, and Hogs Samuel for insubordination, 
let no politeness of his friends deceive him 
into thinking himself a welcome guest. Par- 
ents may hold the reins of power exceeding 
loosely, but they have a strong prejudice 
against suffering any outside hand to usurp 
their hold ; and as for the little ill-bred imps 
themselves, I greatly fear they would give 
M 



178 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

Heraclitus but a moral crucifixion in return 
for his excellent " discipline." 

I go further, and say that even if the lady 
had been the child's mother, it is not at all 
certain that she did not do the wisest thing. 
We lay it to the necessity of breaking a child's 
will. Why need a child's will be broken? 
He will have use for it all. The difference 
between strength of will and weakness of 
will is often the difference between efficiency 
and inefficiency. Train a child to self-con- 
trol, so that his will may be his strong point, 
but do not break his will. We read heart- 
rending accounts of prolonged struggles be- 
tween a baby and its father, resulting, after 
hours and sometimes days of mutual agony, 
in parental victory — of course ! It would not 
be wise to say that this is always unwise. 
There may be occasions when willfulness 
and obstinacy and wrong must be directly 
met and mastered, but, as a general rule, 
such issues are to be avoided. It is not 



DISCIPLINING CHILDREN. 179 

a fair fight. The little one is so ignorant, so 
helpless, so bewildered ! The father is strong 
and well equipped. Noblesse oblige. Let the 
superior wisdom be used in turning aside an- 
tagonism rather than in overcoming it. Half 
the time the disobedience was originally inno- 
cent. It was the expression merely of a tem- 
porary mood, a half-unconscious physical dis- 
inclination, the mere intentness of a mind 
strongly and singly set on its own aims, and 
wholly free from evil intent and moral turpi- 
tude. But the parental insistence develops the 
antagonistic determination, and so raises the 
devil which it subsequently prides itself on cast- 
ing out. In the case under notice, the little girl 
had probably no spite, no mischief, no willful- 
ness even, in her heart. All her little soul was 
absorbed in her own thought. If there were 
willfulness, it was of a very innocent sort, 
scarcely to be distinguished from playfulness ; 
and it is far more dignified for a mature and 
cultivated mind to yield lovingly and play- 



180 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

f 

fully to the impetuousness of the little savage 
than to overshadow it with ponderosity, and 
magnify it into a case of gravity and disci- 
pline. As between obedience and disobedi- 
ence there is no choice ; it is a misfortune to 
a child — though not a fatal one — not to be 
so trained that obedience is natural and in- 
stinctive. Parental law is to him what natural 
and civil law are to the adult. The parent 
may fail to enforce law, but God and society 
are stern. If one be not taught to bear the 
yoke in his youth, it will be a heavy burden to 
his manhood ; for bear the yoke he must. If 
he do not control himself, society will control 
him, bitterly; and the longer self-control is 
delayed, the harder it is to learn. Moreover, 
a child is as much happier as he is stronger 
for being subject to, held up by, reasonable 
law. None are so wretched as he who is given 
over to be preyed upon by his own moods and 
passions. But the relation between parent and 
child is not so inelastic as to involve nothing 



DISCIPLINING CHILDREN. 181 

else than obedience and disobedience. There 
is ample room for the play of freedom and 
mirth and badinage. Very small children un- 
derstand the difference between literal and 
figurative statements, between real and mock 
commands, between assumed and actual stern- 
ness. Long before Jaime has stepped out of 
tucks and embroidery, before his little feet 
have wholly mastered the secret of steering 
and steadiness, lie perfectly comprehends that 
when you say, " Jaime, I will eat you up I" 
it is no cannibal's threat, and he enters into 
the spirit of it with w T ell-feigned distress, and 
much shielding of dimpling cheeks with dim- 
pled hands, and brilliant evolutions of flight 
and pursuit. While essential obedience should 
be secured, wide margin should be granted for 
the nourishment and expansion of a child's 
own individuality, for his peculiar mental ac- 
tion, and for the cultivation and gratification 
of his tastes. This may lapse into weak and 
vicious indulgence, but even this is no worse 



182 NITKSERY NOONINGS. 

than arrogant and tyrannical exercise of pow- 
er, which takes no cognizance of a child's sep- 
arate selfhood, but alike in great things and 
in small makes itself first, and exacts from 
the child only prompt and perfect submission. 
The wise parent is as far removed from the 
one extreme as from the other. Neither li- 
cense nor slavery ; but liberty is as good for 
the child as for his parents. And if this liberty 
bring about that rectitude of the natural im- 
pulses by which Heraclitus sets so small store, 
and diminish the necessity for that "unpleas- 
ant discipline" by which he sets so great store, 
is it indeed a consummation devoutly to be 
deprecated? I can not see why it is more 
virtuous to be obliged to tie your hands in or- 
der to keep from stealing than it is not to 
want to steal. It seems to me that a family 
or a national administration is more success- 
ful if it diminish the inclination to wrong- 
doing than if it punish wrong-doing. He who 
makes obedience and deference " natural im- 



DISCIPLINING CHILDREN. 183 

pulses" is a better disciplinarian than he who 
flogs for disobedience and impoliteness. 

My friend is also moved with disgust at the 
lack of heroism displayed in juvenile manage- 
ment. He evidently thinks we are training a 
race of women who will rival that princess 
whose royal birth was proved by the fact that 
three peas placed under the twenty piled-up 
mattresses upon which she w T as lying had 
bruised her black and blue before morning. 
He objects to such a sentiment as that pain is 
too dreadful to be accepted when it can be 
avoided, because it tends to depreciate courage. 
If parents, unwilling to use mere authority to 
gain a child's consent to a dreaded but nec- 
essary surgical operation, and having vainly 
exhausted reasoning to prove its necessity, at 
length offer some valued boon, some long-cov- 
eted possession, he looks upon it as outrageous 
bribery. But does Heraclitus mean that pain 
is to be accepted when it can be avoided ? 
That is not courage ; it is folly, or, at the best, 



184 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

insensibility. If a man is more afraid of 
ether than he is of the forceps, he may well 
reject ether, but he may not call it courage. 
I suppose almost any one who had strength 
of nerve, strength of muscle, and a jackknife 
could extract an effete tooth if you would 
give him time enough. Yet the suffering 
owner would probably go to the skilled dentist 
who could disembarrass him most swiftly and 
deftly of the offending member. And he is 
no coward for preferring to be relieved by a 
master rather than extricated by a clod-hop- 
per. Neither is he a coward for going still 
further, and annihilating all consciousness of 
pain. To escape necessary suffering is as wise 
as to bear with fortitude inevitable suffering is 
heroic. But to make a little girl endure pain 
rather than endure a little anxiety or take a 
little trouble yourself, is, like swearing, " nei- 
ther brave, polite, nor wise." 

It would be admirable if children could be 
made always to listen to reason. Yet reason- 



DISCIPLINING CHILDKEN. 185 

ing is sometimes, even among grown people, 
vainly exhausted. Is it therefore incredible 
and monstrous that children should occasion- 
ally be impervious to its appeals ? Men are 
most logically incarcerated and executed, but 
if they had the power they would, with the 
utmost sophistry, escape. The gift which a 
fond father offers his daughter to induce her 
to submit consentingly to a dreaded but nec- 
essary operation, rather than to force her by 
mere authority to submit, may or may not be 
wise, but to call it " outrageous bribery " is to 
use words without knowledge — is to speak as 
the foolish women speak in those conventions 
which Heraclitus is the first to discountenance, 
not to say ridicule. If Heraclitus does not 
like the way in which parents manage their 
children, it is not necessary that he should 
give a reason for his disapprobation. He may 
stand with folded arms and " make faces " at 
them from his own "natural impulses" if it 
seem good to him, but if he insists upon pro- 



180 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

ducing reasons, and furnishes no better than 
these, let him not hope to cause any great dim- 
inution of parental in judiciousness and indul- 
gence. 

He thinks that the bad manners of Ameri- 
can children are notorious, and lays a large 
part of it to the neglect of Miss Edgeworth 
and the going astray after false gods. We 
have heard so much of these bad manners that 
it may be presumptuous to question our emi- 
nence in ill-breeding. Still, a too emphatic 
and prolonged crimination has a tendency to 
defeat its end and instigate recrimination. 
What may be the manner of Irish children I 
have small means of knowing. They at least 
have had the advantage of the instruction 
and example of the excellent Miss Edgeworth, 
whom we highly and justly extol. Neverthe- 
less Miss Edgeworth's own brother grew up, 
we are told, with every virtue except those 
which belong to civilization. He hated books, 
hated government of every sort, and finally 



DISCIPLINING CHILDREN. 187 

ran off to sea. If Miss Edgeworth's theories 
of juvenile management were framed from 
what she saw, the result is not so encouraging 
that we need copy it. If they were the nat- 
ural rebound from what she saw, it is hardly 
fair to extol Irish at the expense of American 
children. 

My personal knowledge of English children 
is equally limited ; but so far as we can judge 
from popular literature, from the story-tellers 
and the caricaturists, it would seem that the 
children and youth of England are not better 
bred than those of America. I think Ameri- 
can society would be ransacked in vain for 
such fierce and violent vulgarity as is found in 
the pages of popular novelists like Thackeray 
and Miss Austen. I am very sure that no son 
of any American family prominent in literary 
or social life would think it good manners to 
sit on the supper-table when attending a party 
at a friend's house, though a son of a very high 
family in England did not consider it an im- 



188 NUESERY NOONINGS. 

proper mark of respect or disrespect for his 
host, as I am assured by eye-witnesses. Amer- 
ican discipline may be at a low ebb, but if an 
American boy's penchant for sitting on sup- 
per-tables had not been broken up by his par- 
ents before he was five years old, the young 
man's ability to do so would be speedily de- 
stroyed by the first gentleman at whose table 
he should attempt it. 

I should be sorry to say any thing that 
might aid and abet our idle, lax, and worthless 
American fathers and mothers. But it is an 
indisputable fact that children do take an im- 
mense deal of spoiling without permanent in- 
jury if there is good stock in them. Nature 
seems to think more of substance than train- 
ing, for she gives children not when people are 
wisest, but when they are freshest and strong- 
est. It is delightful to see children always 
behaving with perfect propriety and polite- 
ness ; but if they kick and cuff and scream 
and grab, all is not lost. There is a certain 



DISCIPLINING CHILDKEN. 189 

governor whom not having seen I love, because 
he sends word to his son that his grandson is 
the best little fellow in the world if you do 
not thwart him, and always obedient if you 
will only not hurry him about it. The Baby 
in Breeches was standing by my chair, and I 
clandestinely snatched a kiss, whereupon up 
flew his chubby hand and gave me a smart 
slap on the cheek. It was in my heart to re- 
tort with a thump, but I refrained, and by and 
by, when I wmispered, " Why did you strike 
me ?" he answered, innocently, " Because you 
stole a kiss." Innocent as an angel, for it was 
pure frolic, and no malice or rudeness at all. 
But we expect to take liberties with children, 
and then have them perfectly wise and aware 
of the exact degree of respect to be observed 
toward ourselves. 

Oh, careful and mistrusting parent, let no 
Ileraclitus without or within destroy your peace 
of mind. It is not only the good and gentle, 
but also the froward child, who is going to 



190 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

give you credit by and by : the wild and way- 
ward, the turbulent and uproarious little mis- 
creant whom you can not manage, who seems 
to be beyond your control — perhaps he is be- 
yond your control. In fact, all children are 
beyond parental control. They are separate 
and independent human beings, with tastes 
and tendencies and tempers as distinct as if 
they were a hundred years old. You feel that 
wise training is of the utmost importance, and 
so it is ; but if you lack wisdom, love is often 
wiser than wisdom. This, at least, is sure : the 
most impressive and effective parental train- 
ing is in the parent himself. The father and 
mother can do nothing worse for their child 
than to be themselves false and fretful and 
fault-finding ; they can do nothing better for 
him than to be themselves upright, frank, gen- 
erous, large-hearted, respected, and honored. 
No instruction is so thorough as the constant 
and unconscious instruction conveyed when 
the parents are all that they wish their chil- 



DISCIPLINING CHILDREN. 191 

dren to become, and this instruction they have 
always under their own control. The little 
ones, if they are of an enterprising turn, will 
often tread a zigzag path ; but it is almost cer- 
tain to tend constantly upward, and bring them 
presently into the table-lands of high thought 
and honorable words and courtliness, and the 
desire of fame and love of truth, and all that 
makes a man — or a woman ! 



192 NURSERY NOONINGS. 



IX. 

THE WARD 8 OF THE NATION. 

The noble savage of the Southwest is not a 
pleasant person to fall in with except in nov- 
els, lie is not only fierce and cruel and 
treacherous, all of which he might be without 
forfeiting his niche in romance, but, not to put 
too fine a point on it, he is a very lazy, a very 
dirty, a very disgusting noble savage. There- 
fore he is not a good character to w r ork up into 
novels until he is translated into the romance 
language. It is not, alas ! impossible to con- 
struct a temporary hero out of an assassin ; but 
all the unities and all the proprieties rise up in 
revolt against a hero who makes his toilet by 
greasing himself from head to foot ; whose sole 
garment is a coarse cotton cloth, perpetually 
guiltless of the laundry ; who is too lazy even 
to hunt, but depends for his living on what he 



THE WAEDS OF THE NATION. 193 

can steal from his industrious and ambitious 
white neighbor ; who lounges in idleness while 
his women, old and young alike, toil in his 
thankless service ; and who, by his indolence 
and his general and total depravity, has be- 
come a squalid, emaciated, and loathsome hor- 
ror. 

In pursuit of their natural avocation these 
noble savages, our brethren of the Apaches, 
Kioways, and other tribes, have a way of pounc- 
ing upon our frontier settlements, slaying the 
men, capturing the women and children, and 
bearing them away to a life more horrible 
than all the imaginations of death. 

Colonel Leavenworth, son of the man whose 
name has become a part of the history and ge- 
ography of Kansas, acting under orders from 
our government, was wont occasionally to 
descend upon these outlying tribes to rescue, 
peaceably if he could, forcibly if he must, 
such captives as might have fallen into their 
clutches. A little while ago he made such a 
N 



194 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

descent, and succeeded in ransoming from the 
mouth of hell a wretched company of women 
and children. 

Among these were two little girls, apparent- 
ly of three and five years of age, whom none 
of the captives claimed, whose name no one 
knew, whose origin no one could conjecture. 
Two little waifs tossed up by a cruel sea upon 
an unknown shore — two little pitiful children, 
they stood before the pitying man, with pale, 
wistful faces, with matted hair, with scanty 
clothing, silent, sad-eyed, bereft, overborne by 
a weight of woe too heavy for them to com- 
prehend. Torn from the rude, hardy, yet civ- 
ilized frontier life, thrust at tender age into 
the unfathomable depths of brutal barbarism, 
their little souls seemed already to have sunk 
into the nether darkness. Their own names 
had faded from their memory. But it was 
Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins ; and when 
the fresh, pure air breathed over it, slowly it 
began to run red and bright once more. Won 



THE WAEDS OF THE NATION. 195 

by friendly words and much gentle urgency, 
light faintly broke upon their darkened mem- 
ories ; and to persistent questioning, in sorrow- 
f ul, fragmentary sentences, with childish, tragic, 
uncomprehending simplicity, their mournful 
history unfolded itself. They remembered fa- 
ther and mother. The Indians came. They 
saw the Indians cut their father's hair off. The 
Indians shot their mother. Uncle Jim was on 
horseback. Uncle Jim had the baby. The 
Indians shot Uncle Jim. Baby fell down. 
Indians killed the baby on the ground. Such 
was the story of their brief life — a story told 
with a shrinking reluctance, with a shuddering 
awe that spoke all too vividly of the horror 
engraven upon their consciousness. Accord- 
ing to the Indian custom, one of these children 
had already been adopted by a squaw whose 
own child 'was dead. Colonel Leavenworth 
succeeded in buying them, and started on his 
journey northward. The wily but noble sav- 
age followed and stole them both back again. 



196 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

The Colonel returned, and grimly enough 
made a second bargain and paid a second ran- 
som. A characteristic trait of these stalwart 
sons of the forest is to kill rather than release 
their captives. Having received their money 
a second time, they dispatched the children in 
charge of a squaw to Colonel Leavenworth. 
Crossing the Washita River on horseback, this 
well-meaning matron chanced, in course of 
conversation, to slip the oldest child into the 
water; but a young squaw behind, more 
friendly or more far-seeing, plunged into the 
river, rescued the gasping girl, and placed her 
safely in the hands of Colonel Leavenworth. 
In the careful guardianship of the Colonel 
and his family, the little creatures made the 
long journey back to the East, and to the civ- 
ilization which their unknown ancestors had 
left unknown years before. ~No home awaited 
them — no kindred knew them. Cut off from 
all the world, isolated by a strange and dread- 
ful fate, they belonged to the nation. Not of 



THE WAKDS OF THE NATION. 197 

charity, but in strict justice, the country that 
should have protected the parents adopted the 
children. The Government — the broad, un- 
seen, mighty power that guards all greatness, 
yet reckons nothing too weak for its cherish- 
ing — bent like a god, and took them in. In 
an orphan home, under the very shadows of 
that central dome which springs aloft beauti- 
ful as a dream of the heavens above, and 
strong as the solid earth beneath, close to the 
great sheltering heart of the nation, the tired 
feet were stayed, the little wanderers found rest. 
Nameless, the nation gave them a name ; and 
what so fitting as his whose heart softened 
with unutterable tenderness to the sorrows of 
the helpless and lowly ? So, with rare deli- 
cacy, the little ones were endued with the 
name of the Good President ; and now, among 
the somewhat dry, and sometimes dreary rec- 
ords of the " Forty-first Congress, Second Ses- 
sion," you shall read, with a thrill which all 
the formal phraseology can not repress : 



198 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

u Whereas, The Kioway Indians, on or about the fifth day 
of January, eighteen hundred and sixty-eight, captured, in 
Cook County, in the State. of Texas, two female children, 
whose family name is unknown, aged about three and five 
years, after having murdered the parents and all the known 
relatives of said children ; and whereas said children have 
recently been recovered from said Indians, and are now in 
the care of J. H. Leavenworth, and are without any means 
of support ; 

"Therefore, be it resolved, by the Senate and House of 
Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress 
assembled, That the Secretary of the Interior is hereby di- 
rected to reserve, from any annuities due, or to become due, 
to said Kioway Indians, the sum of two thousand five hun- 
dred dollars for each of said children, and cause the same to 
be placed to their credit on the books of the Treasury of the 
United States, to bear interest at the rate of five per centum 
per annum, and use, from time to time, the income from the 
same in such manner as he may deem expedient for their 
maintenance, education, and support, during their lifetime, 
until they attain the age of twenty-one years, when the prin- 
cipal shall be paid them ; and the elder of said children shall 
be hereafter known as Helen Lincoln, and the younger as 
Heloise Lincoln. " 

Curiosity, and perhaps some better motive, 
led me to visit these friendless little orphans, 
now royally befriended. A pleasant-faced, 



THE WAKDS OF THE NATION. 199 

motherly woman had them in charge, and it 
was easy to see that they could scarcely have 
fallen into better hands. It was a very moth- 
erly gratification that smiled in her face at the 
announcement that Congress had passed the 
bill providing for their support. They came 
in, hand-in-hand, two tiny creatures, quaint 
and demure in dress and demeanor. Every 
question they answered with promptness and 
decision, but without spontaneity. No encour- 
agement could bring out any childish prattle, 
or cause any thing but a momentary up-look 
to the downcast eyes. Yet the matron said 
that among children they would play and 
chatter! with the rest, though with adults they 
maintained this unbroken reserve, which no 
association had enabled them to throw off. 
To Colonel Leavenworth, with whom they had 
lived and traveled, to her, as well as to stran- 
gers, they were invariably silent, unless ques- 
tioned, and then they answered in fewest 
words. The habits and ways which they had 
contracted among the Indians were at first very 



200 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

troublesome. They had little notion of the 
use or abuse of clothes, and refused many or- 
dinary articles of food ; but they constantly 
improved, and had already learned not only 
to read and write a little, but to wear clothes, 
which is a good deal harder. They spoke 
with great reluctance of their life among the 
Indians, answering in monosyllables when pos- 
sible. I thought I saw a reminiscence of suf- 
fering and terror in a certain veiled and filmy 
look of the eye ; but perhaps it is only nature's 
defense against the too strong light of outdoor 
life ; and there seemed something of Indian 
undemonstrativeness in the passivity with 
which they met all advances. Yet when, 
fearing to embarrass the child, I would have 
let go the hand I was holding, I noticed that 
the little fingers curled back into mine as if 
the touch, were pleasant. 

I am sure that all fatherly and motherly 
hearts will warm toward these fatherless and 
motherless, and their angels do always behold 
the face of our Father which is in heaven. 



SEPARATION. 201 



X. 

SEPARATION. 

One is often tempted to echo that modest 
remark of a certain wise man that, if he had 
been present at the creation of the world, he 
thought he should have been able to give its 
Maker a few suggestions. There are a few 
things, in fact a good many things, which one 
would like to have altered, and which might 
apparently just as well have been made differ- 
ent in the beginning. And yet, on the whole, 
there is a wonderful adaptation in things as 
they are. To make much improvement, you 
must change so many cases that, before you 
know it, you will find you have projected a 
new world. 

Sometimes one is tempted to think that, if 
the family could not be somehow constituted 
to hold together, we might as well not have 



202 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

had mankind set in families. The father and 
mother make their little home. The children 
laugh and cry, and work and play ; they have 
mumps and measles and " teething" and scar- 
latina; they have little tiffs with each other; 
they are bumped and bruised ; they knock out 
their teeth, and set their clothes on fire, and 
come home at irregular intervals, with a black 
eye or a broken arm. So, under constant 
watching, with many retrogressions and a thou- 
sand hair-breadth escapes, they wind along the 
tortuous path of right living, and presently the 
oldest child has arrived at the comparative 
maturity of — let us say thirteen years. He 
takes an interest in raw but real science — if it 
is very raw — in mechanics, in politics. The 
amount of information he has acquired on all 
subjects is astonishing. lie has penetrated 
machine-shops, mounted locomotives, trotted 
after soldiers, made love to sailors, and few 
things in the heavens above, or the earth be- 
neath, or the waters under the earth, have es- 



SEPAEATION. 203 

caped his observation. Now, at thirteen, he 
begins to consolidate, and you would say his 
father and mother might have some good of 
him. Not that they have not had good of 
him before, prattling, bumping, and bruising 
through his infancy and early boyhood; but 
it was a comfort largely compounded with 
care. It was a delight in bounding health and 
beauty, and grace and promise, always under- 
laid with a fearful consciousness that, when 
the beauty and grace was not snugly tucked 
up in bed, it might be sliding down the third- 
story baluster, or bestriding the ridge-pole of 
the barn, at the imminent risk of its beautiful 
and graceful neck. Only now, when baluster 
and ridge-pole have lost their irresistible first 
charm, and top and kite and ball are not para- 
mount objects of interest — now, when the cau- 
cus and concert and play begin to loom up, 
and the far-off sun of manhood reddens the 
eastern sky — now they can really enjoy him 
without misgiving. Do they ? Not in the 



204 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

least. As soon as he ceases to be an hourly 
care he must go off: to school ! When he was 
of no use to any body his parents took him 
wholly upon themselves ; but as soon as he be- 
gins to be of the smallest account they have to 
give him up to the public. No organized tyr- 
anny demands him, but just as surely and au- 
thoritatively society stretches out its hand and 
clutches him. His new shirts, his fresh jack- 
ets and spotless handkerchiefs are put into his 
box, and out he goes into the great world for 
ever and ever. True, he will come back for 
the vacation, with half his handkerchiefs lost, 
his jackets out at elbows, and his e very-day 
boots serenely packed atop his pile of shirts; 
and for several years he will oscillate between 
home and school; but home for life he will 
never come again. Home, the eternal rest- 
ing-place — home, his absorbing and exclusive 
world — has ceased to be. His childish, instinct- 
ive, savage love his parents had ; but as soon as 
he is capable of an intelligent, manly affection, 



. SEPARATION. 205 

he goes straightway and falls in love with a 
stranger! It is a consolation to reflect that 
he is then at the same point whence his father 
and mother started, and will travel the same 
round, and see precisely how good it is. 

The wonder is that it is pretty good, after 
all. Dreadful as it may be for parents to give 
up their child, it would be still more dreadful 
not to give him up. It is next to impossible 
for the grown children of a family to stay at 
home honorably. Life may so adjust itself 
that this is the best possible arrangement ; but 
usually the sons who have energy, enterprise, 
character, push out into the world. What 
good has the mother in her empty house, with 
one son in China, and one in California, and 
one in Chicago, and one on the high seas? 
The foolish mother thinks she has vast treas- 
ure still, and conceives immediately a deep and 
abiding interest in all those places. Instead 
of dismissing her son from her thought, she 
takes into her heart at once all the ends of the 



206 NURSEKY NOONINGS. 

earth and all the paths of the sea. Not a 
newspaper scrap from China or California es- 
capes her eye. The scope of her mind has be- 
come enlarged through the scope of her affec- 
tion, and her son's good name in Cathay makes 
her as proud and happy as if she heard his 
praise resounding under her own roof-tree. 

It is frequent parting that softens the asper- 
ity and sweetens the bitterness and mitigates 
the fierceness of association. Human nature is 
so sharp and strong and self-willed, that it is 
a great trial for human beings to live together. 
The substantial traits of character may be har- 
monious ; but little tastes, slight individuali- 
ties, opposing tempers, will clash ; and even 
Christian forbearance, generous yielding, kind- 
ly courtesy, need the occasional help of absence 
to keep life permanently sweet. Absence is 
the great idealizer, and withal, perhaps, the 
most truthful painter. Your stout, healthy, 
noisy boy, who teased his sisters, and tossed his 
pillows, and broke furniture, and tried even his 



SEPARATION. 207 

mother's patience, has gone away; and in his 
silent room you only think how bright and 
frank and fearless he is — how generous, alert, 
and eager. The friend and companion whose 
impatience irritated yon, whose indecision an- 
noyed you, whose impromptitnde exasperated 
yon, has crossed the seas, and you remember 
only how truthful he was, how loyal, how de- 
voted, how unselfish. 

It is parting, indeed, that plows great fur- 
rows in the heart, but it keeps the soil mellow 
and open, receptive and fertile. Made as we 
are, we should grow, without it, too hard, ex- 
acting, unresponsive, unforgiving. With the 
pain of parting always near, with the shadow 
of one parting never far, it is easy to repress 
the hasty word, to discern the sunny side, to 
veil the weakness with charity, and nourish 
the strength with love. The heart grows soft 
and tender and considerate, self fades and self- 
ishness dies, and the whole being goes out in 
eager desire to succor and bless its beloved. 



208 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

Alas ! for the deepening shadows of the one 
parting. 

On a pleasant summer morning I was walk- 
ing up the village street. Far ahead of me, 
three little children were playing in the road. 
A venerable horse was sauntering slowly along, 
cropping the rich grass by the wayside. As 
he passed the children, they left their play and 
gave chase, in dangerous proximity to his heels. 
By the time I came up they had resumed their 
sport, and were fashioning wonderful hills and 
lakes and ranges of mountains out of the clean, 
fine, deep, delicious dust for such case made 
and provided from the foundation of the world. 
One little lad and lass were old friends of 
mine. The third I had never seen ; but I was 
confident he was the son of an old friend, and, 
taking a liberty on which I should not venture 
with an adult, but in which we often indulge 
where children are concerned, I quite over- 
looked my acquaintances, and at once accosted 
the stranger. I was well paid for my bad 



SEPARATION. 209 

manners, since, though the young gentleman 
answered my questions with promptness and 
civility, his attention was not to be diverted 
from physical geography, and I could hardly 
get enough of his interest to secure a satisfac- 
tory survey of his face. Presently my old 
friend, Davy, thought he had been left out in 
the cold long enough; and, determining to 
come into notice, he drew himself up and ad- 
dressed me, with great sonorousness — "How 
do you do, Mr. John Doe ?" 

This, of course, effected a diversion; and 
then I told them how dangerous it was to 
run so close to the horse's heels. 

" Oh," said the little stranger, " he would 
not hurt me! I am a big boy. I am four 
months older than Davy. I am six years 
old !" 

" He thinks that is every thing !" said Davy, 
in an undertone of mingled envy and con- 
tempt. 

"/ am six and a half !" piped Queen Bess, 
. O 



210 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

with the air of one who had reached the 
height of undisputed supremacy. 

And so I left them under the arching elms. 
The shadows danced over their pretty uncon- 
scious heads, the sunlight touched them softly, 
the music of their chattering voices followed 
me afar — three dainty little children playing 
with the dust of the street, all unassoiled. 

And now from his distant home come the 
woeful tidings that the little stranger boy has 
gone to a more distant home. That curly 
head lies low. These first winter snows are 
falling upon his grave. 

Only once I saw him, brighter than the sun- 
shine, under the elms ; but my heart is heavy 
for the home bereft of its only child. 

Why do the little ones die ? Sometimes we 
can plainly see and admire the wisdom of the 
divine arrangement. Ignorance and poverty 
combine to banish wholesome food and pure 
air and cleanliness and warmth, and the feeble 
blood fails, and the little sufferer escapes out 



SEPARATION. 211 

of life. That is a lesson easy to understand. 
We must bestir ourselves, we say, to dissemi- 
nate knowledge of common physical facts, to 
enforce sanitary measures. It is Nature's own 
teaching — severe, but necessary and beneficial. 
If people can not learn to be clean in person 
and atmosphere, except by the death of their 
children, the children must die. Yes; but 
by and by our own children sicken — our own 
children, who are washed and dressed and fed 
and exercised in the fullest light of law and 
Gospel. Every thing that is known of hy- 
giene we know. Every thing that can be 
done for health and strength we do. In- 
door purity and out-door play minister to the 
child's welfare ; and, in spite of all our love 
and all our lore, there he lies on his little 
bed, with filmy eyes, with parched lips, sick 
unto death. 

Why is it ? Neither parent nor doctor can 
tell the cause or the cure of this illness. 
There is nothing in the child's training to ac- 



212 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

count for it. His training, his constitution, 
account only for health. His parents are 
strong, his life has been simple. Something 
wrong has been done ; but we know not what. 
Some "unknown law has been violated; but 
why does God punish us for the violation of 
an unknown law ? Alas ! there is grace in 
the Gospel, but in the law is no room for 
grace. Revealed religion is merciful, but nat- 
ural religion demands an eye for an eye and a 
tooth for a tooth. Paul confidently counted 
on pardon because he sinned ignorantly; but 
for physical sins, whether of ignorance, or in- 
dolence, or wanton indulgence, or active mal- 
ice, there is no forgiveness. The little child, 
innocent, lies on his bed of restlessness and 
suffering and death — suffering for no sin of 
his own. The parents, more than innocent, 
eager to do right, utterly self-sacrificing, watch 
by their child, helpless, sorrowing, tortured 
for some unsurmised error or some ancestral 



SEPARATION. 213 

I have beard it said that every sickness is 
intended to be a reminder of sin. In one 
sense this is imdonbtedlv true. If sin is a 
violation of divine law, all sickness springs 
from sin. God made man upright, but he 
hath sought out many diseases. But uncon- 
scious violation of law is hardly called sin, 
and a large part of sickness springs from an 
unconscious violation of law. Neither the 
man nor his parents are guilty because he was 
born blind. If sickness mean sin in the suf- 
ferer or his kin, then health means holiness, 
and saints may be judged by as well as in 
their bodies. 

But these things come, say others, to teach 
us trust in God and resignation to the divine 
will. But what is the divine will ? It is that 
children shall be born, and grow up, and die 
in ripe old age. It is not the divine will that 
brings about the slaughter of the innocents: 
it is human weakness cutting athwart the di- 
vine will. How can the sickness and death 



214 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

of a well-born and carefully reared child teach 
trust in God ? What sort of trust does it in- 
culcate ? Trust in what sort of a God ? A God 
of inexorable law; a conviction that penalty 
follows even unwitting transgression, though 
innocence is crushed and hearts are broken ; 
a terrible misgiving that power is stronger 
than pity. Ah! I do not think these sor- 
rows teach, but they try man's trust in God. 
The faith is strong indeed that does not 
waver then. Job could say, " Though he 
slay me, yet will I trust in him ;" but even 
he does not say, Because he slay me will I 
trust. 

The Divine Being is rich in resources, and 
has many ways to come at his creatures. Nor 
does he confine himself to one end in the use 
of means ; but, with the utmost economy, ac- 
complishes many objects by a single stroke. 
But it seems to me that the very last and least 
of all the lessons he teaches is resignation. 
When an unlooked-for calamity happens, the 



SEPARATION. 215 

one thing we ought not to do is to be resigned 
to it. We ought to be resigned to that system 
of things under which it happens, because it is 
the divine system. Hard and heavy as the 
blow may fall on us, we may still trust that 
God is good and kind, though he seem pitiless, 
and would not have let us suffer if he could 
have helped it. But his plans are, on the 
whole, the best that could be devised, and 
there is no way but this to bring us to a 
knowledge of his truth. But to fold our 
hands in passive resignation is to make the 
suffering of none effect. "Nature is lavish," 
says the father of six dead and two living 
children. "A thousand blossoms overspread 
the tree, and but few grow into fruit. God's 
will be done." Yery true. But if the farmer 
found that three fourths of his calves, lambs, 
pigs, chickens, died every spring, would he 
talk of resignation ? On the contrary, he 
would take the most active measures to dis- 
cover the cause of the fatality; and, if he 



216 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

could not discover it, he would speedily give 
up farming. Are not children of more value 
than many calves? Is it reasonable to sup- 
pose that it is the divine will that lambs 
should live, but that the far more elaborate, 
more costly, more precious human infant, 
made in the very image of God, should per- 
ish ? Yet people whom a fatality in the barn- 
yard would incite to persistent investigation 
and consultation and thought and experiment 
will see child after child die, and never sus- 
pect that they are called upon for any thing 
but resignation. 

Fortunately for us, God is so abundant, not 
only in loving kindness, but in modes of ex- 
pressing it, that, though we miss the main les- 
son, we learn many subordinate ones. A thou- 
sand parents suffer and nothing seems to come 
of it. But by and by rises a man who has 
eyes to see. He piles fact upon fact, deduces 
therefrom a law, and the world is wiser for 
his living, and the children of the future have 



SEPARATION. 217 

one more chance for life. But meanwhile 
the thousand parents who had no thought of 
cause and effect, who see God only in church- 
ly relations, in infinite leisure, in the remote 
heavens, and never as a God close at hand in 
the ceaseless activity of every-day life, they, 
too, have drawn a little nearer to him — a little 
nearer by sorrow to all the sorrowful. They 
have grown finer through the ministry of pain ; 
they have become detached from the narrow 
by the mystery of the wider life. So blindly 
we feel after God, and find him in the skies, 
though we miss him where he stands, not far 
from every one of us. 

And still, blindly groping, may w T e not find 
another solace ? 

It w T as the picture of a man twenty -two 
years old. The youthful face was fair, fresh, 
guileless as a child's, yet strong and steadfast, 
with all the promise of manhood. Looking at 
the full, firm Outlines, at the pure and vivid 
coloring, at the expression, singularly frank, 



218 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

simple, and engaging, one found himself in- 
voluntarily saying, " Strength and beauty are 
in his sanctuary." 

It was the face of a young man smitten 
down in his opening manhood to a sudden 
and cruel death. No disease mastered him, 
no imprudence or ignorance of his own over- 
toot him, no sacred cause demanded the sac- 
rifice of his young years. But an incredible 
and most guilty carelessness on the part of 
another sped the swift bullet, and in a mo- 
ment, in the twinkling of an eye, before love 
could even look upon him, he was torn away 
from sweet life. All the pleasure and the 
pains lavished on his two-and-twenty years — 
mother's woe and mother's love, the culture of 
school and home, paternal pride and trust, so- 
cial joys, memories and hopes of fireside hap- 
piness — all crushed beneath one bitter blow, 
all buried in one untimely grave. 

Opposite hangs another picture. It is the 
face of a man one hundred and two years old. 



SEPARATION. 219 

The features are sharp, the eyes sunken, and 
with a sort of wistful, eager, submissive sad- 
ness, as of eyes that have " looked in vain. 5 ' 
The whole face is plowed with furrows, the 
form is shrunken, thin, and bent. It is a 
hundred and two years old. 

And I look back upon the sunny, sweet 
face opposite, immortal in its youth, and I 
can not ask which is the better fate ? In- 
stinctively I feel through all my shudder- 
ing soul that life may be more tragic than 
death. 

It is true — it is terribly, hopelessly true — that 

"Not all the preaching since Adam 
Can make death other than death." 

The hearthstone is cold every night, and the 
table newly vacant each morning, and the si- 
lence freshly and forever vital with loss, while 
we long w T ith unspeakable longing and cease- 
less pain, not for the conclusions of philosophy, 
not — ah! Heaven be kind ! — not for the con- 
solations of religion ; but for the very face 



220 NUESEEY NOONINGS. 

which we shall never see, for the ringing, 
merry, happy voice which through all the long, 
long, dreary, waiting years shall not any more 
be heard. 

For us who remain the loss is final and fa- 
tal ; to be endured, but not to be mitigated. 
But for him how fares it ? Ah ! for him, even 
behind death, there is hope. If beyond the 
grave is no existence, then neither affection 
availeth any thing nor disaffection. Let us 
eat and drink, for what signifies aught? But 
if all our faith be not vain, if not in this 
life only have we hope in Christ, is it so sure 
that an evil thing hath happened even to 
him who was summoned hence in his youth ? 
Doubtless the Creator meant that we should 
desire life and love many days, that we may 
see good; yet not to the dead come silence 
and emptiness, and the grief of a clay -cold 
body for warmth and breath and beauty. All 
these he left in leaving life, and passed on to 
another world to new surroundings, to plans 



SEPABATION. 221 

and purposes, to interests and enjoyments as 
full, as keen, as absorbing as those that en- 
grossed him here ; to friendships not more ten- 
der, perhaps, but perhaps more wise ; to com- 
panions and guardians who shall not supplant 
the old, but who shall satisfy his yearnings 
and forefend the pangs of loneliness and heart- 
hunger, and a homesickness of the heavens. 
Out of life he goes, but into life. The wick- 
edly wanton bullet could smite earth with a 
lasting sorrow, but it carried no disaster to 
the skies. The young eye grew dim, and 
the strong arm failed, and the right hand lost 
its cunning ; but, entering his new world, no 
power was weakened, no keen possibility was 
dulled, not a charm w T as lost, not a grace 
marred. 

"Oh! death, where is thy sting? Oh! grave, 
where is thy victory ?" 

But what is it to live a hundred and two 
years ? It is to dwell among the tombs. It is 
to be the one living out of all the dead ; the 



222 NUKSEKY NOONINGS. 



one as good as dead among the living. One 
after another they disappeared — the friends 
of childhood and of youth, parents ; then the 
past had vanished ;■ brothers, sisters, the friends 
of middle years; then self sank out of sight. 
Last of all, children died also, and life was 
gone. Between the active, glowing world and 
this sad survivor is a great gulf fixed, and 
who can tell the horror of great darkness that 
falls upon him ? What wan years stretch be- 
fore him ! What waste places lie around him ! 
What dim phantoms mock him out of the dis- 
tant past ! What twilight of the mind veils 
his future and deadens his aspiration ! A 
little child playing among the buttercups a 
hundred years ago ! Was it he ? Youth and 
maiden — fair -haired, ruddy, shy, and eager — 
where are the eyes that shunned his glance? 
Whose were the eyes that gazed ? What was 
it that stirred him so deeply in that long ago ? 
What fever was in his blood, now so slow and 
cold ? What made life then so rosy, that is 



SEPARATION. 223 

now so colorless? Oh! vague torment of a 
clouded soul ! Weary conflict between feeble 
memories and the wraiths of the present ! In 
a vast realm of shadows is there any sub- 
stance ? Through this hell of passivities shines 
there any gleam of the heaven of activity ? 



224 NURSERY NOONINGS. 



XI. 

WHO IS WHO? 

A brave and knightly gentleman of four- 
score and fourteen years held in his arms a 
tiny maiden of not one twentieth so many 
months. He gazed into her blue, steadfast 
eyes, caressed the silky brown shadow that was 
fondly called her hair, patted the soft curv- 
ature of her cheeks and the dimpled shining 
shoulders, and said — half musingly and mourn- 
fully, looking backward — half tenderly and 
lovingly, looking forward — " It is Katy ; sure- 
ly it is Katy, plain to see." 

Now Katy has been in her grave these 
eighty years. 

Eighty years ago Katy, beloved daughter 
and sister, in the fresh, full bloom of happy 
girlhood, paled and faded before the eyes that 
wept to see, sank away from the hands that 



who is who? 225 

could not hold. her, disappeared from a world 
that did not miss her, to live only and for ever- 
more in hearts whose world was desolated by 
her going. 

Over that forgotten and unforgotten grave 
eighty rolling years have fled. Nearly every 
form that trod the earth that day sleeps this 
day beneath it. That generation has lapsed 
into a silence never to be broken. What they 
thought and hoped and planned and loved, 
all that they longed for and worked for and 
dreaded — to all they are alike indifferent. 
Beaming eye and listening ear and throbbing 
heart, sturdy strength of sinew, tint of lip and 
cheek — the earth has ingulfed them all. They 
exist no more but in the sleeping daisy and 
the lightly falling snow. But out of the snows 
of eighty winters and the daisies of eighty 
summers, by what magic art I know not, little 
maid Margaret has gathered the eye's light 
and the lip's curve, and the chin's dimple and 
the cheek's contour of little Great-great-aunt 



226 NUKSEKY NOONINGS. 

Katy, who gave them into earth's keeping 
now these fourscore years ago. 

Behold, I show you a mystery ! But I only 
show it. I can not explain it. Who can ? 
None, surely, but He who instituted it. What 
is that wonderful, that incomprehensible law 
of succession, of inheritance, of transmission, 
by which qualities, traits, features, go down 
from father to son, from great-uncle to grand- 
nephew, from remote ancestor to unseen off- 
spring? We are so used to it that we are 
not surprised ; but it is, nevertheless, one of 
the most hidden of secrets. There is some law, 
but we have not begun to grasp it. That a 
child should resemble its parents we can al- 
most persuade ourselves that we understand. 
Love, we know — nay, even association — but 
love, surely and strongly, moulds even matur- 
ity into harmony and even into resemblance. 
The husband and wife, born and reared far 
from each other, under circumstances and in 
a society totally diverse, do sometimes, it is 



who is who ? 227 

said, come to resemble each other. That 
abounding mutual attraction which drew them 
together makes them one in hope and love 
and purpose and sympathy and heart's desire, 
and brings presently oneness of expression 
and feature. This we may fancy that we un- 
derstand. The children are stamped with the 
image that each cherishes most fondly. This, 
too, is not wholly incomprehensible. But, 
even here, why does one child resemble the 
father and one the mother, and why is a third 
totally unlike both ? We only pluck at the 
skirts of a mystery, and it evades us. And 
why should this boy have the petulance and 
passion, the temperament, and even the man- 
ners, of a great-uncle whom neither his father 
nor his mother ever saw, who died in early 
manhood, and of all the living is remembered 
now and recalled only by his sister, who sees 
him reproduced in this little grandson after 
sixty years of silence and seclusion % Obe- 
dient to what mandate did maid Margaret look 



228 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

through Katy's eyes and smile with Katy's 
lips so loyally that Floyd went back through 
all his bitter, busy years, back through his soft 
Indian summer and his rich harvest-time and 
the sweet spring sunlight, to his bright boy- 
hood and his young sister's promise ? Why 
do children and children's children go their 
separate ways to the ends of the earth, marry 
out and out, grow bronzed by foreign suns 
and foreign blood, to be in some remote spot 
recognized as kindred by an alien and a stran- 
ger through some peculiar quivering of the 
eyelid or some singular remembered cadence 
of the voice ? By what law came that eyelid 
to quiver, that voice to resound through the 
intermingling and fusion, not to say confusion, 
of years and zones and families? Why does 
that one resemblance strain through a thou- 
sand differences, and why does it alight only 
on three or four, and shun the three or four 
score who have equal claim to its favor ? 
Are the few resemblances we recognize not 



WHO IS WHO ? 229 

to be compared to the many, unrecognized, 
which we inherit from forgotten forefathers ? 
Is it that every trick of feature and trait of 
character belonged first to some ancestor, only 
there is no one to tell us who he was ? Are 
we but eclecticism and conglomeration, a mere 
second and third hand article — the disjecta 
membra of past generations? Does Nature 
mock us ? With all our pain and toil and eager 
endeavor, with all our anguish and anger, am- 
bition and hatred, and hope and love, are we 
but treading, after all, the old dull round of 
things ? Has all this mortal agony and unut- 
terable bliss of birth and love and life and 
death resulted only in this, that what was Katy 
once is Margaret now — that a man is simply 
his grandfather ? Then why not let Katy 
keep on living? Why not let the grandfather 
stay grandfather ? Why should Nature be at 
the pains of so many processes to make three 
generations, when it would seem that one gen- 
eration would answer the same purpose with 



230 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

a great deal less trouble ? Why did not 
Nature hold out as she began — 

"When Adam lived nine hundred years, 
Methuselah still more ; 
When Enoch very old appears — 
Seth, Abraham, and Noah ?" 

And yet these cases may not be at all 
to the point. I do not know that the chil- 
dren of these old patriarchs, and their grand- 
children and their great-grandchildren, were 
any more original than the offspring of their 
short-lived descendants. Doubtless as Eve 
dandled little Lamech upon her knees she 
delighted to see and to point out that in his 
forehead he favored Methusael, and that he 
had Mehujael's nose, and Irad's eyes, and 
the bonnie brown hair of Enoch, and then, 
with a deep sigh, she would skip a generation, 
and declare that by his sturdy tread and erect 
little figure you might know him the wide 
world through for Adam's own grandson ! We 
do not, then, strictly speaking, inherit traits. 



WHO IS WHO ? 231 

We are simply made with like tendencies. 
Margaret has nothing that Katy ever held, but 
through some remote, deep-buried law of like- 
ness, out of the dew and blossom of the earth 
she gathers such a loveliness of outline and 
color as Katy drew from the young world of 
hers. Though Katy had lived on till now, 
Margaret would have been Margaret all the 
same. 

It is to be said in favor of the present order 
of things, that under it we are alive and 
ourselves instead of being only our grand- 
fathers or buttercups. 



232 NURSERY NOONINGS. 



XII. 

MOTHERS AS GUARDIANS. 

A loving missionary mother once said that 
through all the infancy and childhood of her 
children she was never free from the dread of 
that day when she must send them to America 
to be educated. To the ordinary mind it seems 
that there is no business in the world so im- 
portant that parents have a right to give up 
their children for its sake, whether that busi- 
ness be commerce or fashion or converting the 
heathen. The heathen are a great way off 
from us; and in a vast majority of cases are 
full-grown heathen, and in all cases establish- 
ed heathen nations, before we are so much as 
aware of their existence. We are not in the 
least responsible for their being heathen, or 
for their being at all. But for the little child 
his parents are responsible. He is their pecul- 






MOTHEES AS GUAKDIANS. 233 

iar property, their "charge to keep;" and how 
they can justify themselves in giving him in 
exchange for any number of aliens and for- 
eigners it is difficult to see. What shall it 
profit a man if he gain the whole world and 
lose his own child ? Between a million Mon- 
golians — who have been eating with chopsticks 
for thousands of years, whom you have to trav- 
el half around the world to get at, and who, as 
a nation, are likely to go on without any more 
perceptible diminution of chopsticks than if 
you had stayed at home — and your own child, 
whom you have called into existence, and 
whose character and fate for this world and 
for all worlds lie in your hands, how can there 
be any choice ? Which has the strongest claim ? 
I say nothing against pagan claims. I know 
that Christ said, Go ye and teach all nations; 
but he did not say, Take now thy son and 
offer him for a burnt -offering. It is grand 
for a man to sacrifice himself; but has he a 
right to sacrifice his children? And can any 



234 NUKSEKY NOONINGS. 

sacrifice be greater than the loss of their par- 
ents ? When I think of the shadow that broods 
over the cradle in sO many missionary homes 
— the shadow of a separation almost worse 
than death, for it has the sorrows without the 
immunities of death ; a separation which 
means that you lose out of your home the 
prattle, the hinderance, the dear waywardness 
of little children, the brightness of boyhood 
and girlhood, the ardor of opening life ; and 
that somewhere out of reach the young hearts 
may be breaking with homesickness, as yours 
is breaking with childsickness ; somewhere the 
life whose every development is so clear to you, 
whose very faults only bind you to it closer; 
somewhere out of sight, out of reach, that life 
is unfolding to the eye and touch of strangers 
— thinking of all this, I think of the devotee 
swinging on his iron hooks. It seems, some- 
how, a sadder thing to leave one's children 
from a sense of duty than from recklessness 
of obligation. It is the torture of hearts made 



MOTHERS AS GUARDIANS. 235 

sensitive by education, conscience, refinement. 
I suppose it is noble and unselfish, but I can 
not think it right. 

Paul, in his charge to Timothy, says : " Thou, 
therefore, endure hardness as a good soldier 
of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entan- 
gleth himself in the affairs of this life." Of 
which the Rev. Albert Barnes, of blessed mem- 
ory, makes note thus : 

" Neither the minister nor the soldier is to 
be encumbered with the affairs of this life; 
and the one should not be more than the other. 
. . . Roman soldiers were not allowed to marry, 
nor to engage in any husbandry or trade. . . . 
The general principle was that they were ex- 
cluded from those relations, agencies, and en- 
gagements which it was thought would divert 
their minds from that which was to be the 
sole object of pursuit. So with the ministers 
of the Gospel. It is equally improper for 
them to entangle themselves with the business 
of a farm or plantation, with plans of specula- 



236 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

tion and gain, and with any purpose of worldly 
aggrandizement. The minister of the Gospel 
accomplishes the design of his appointment 
only when he can say with sincerity that he is 
not entangled with the affairs of this life." 

Mr. Barnes skillfully avoids affirming that 
ministers should not marry ; bnt he might as 
well have said it outright. He declares that 
Eoman soldiers were not allowed to marry, 
and that it is equally improper for ministers 
to entangle themselves. Therefore, ministers 
ought not to marry. In this logic can the eye 
of faith discern a flaw ? Now, with the (Ecu- 
menical Council fresh in our memories, heaven 
forbid that we should go about preaching a 
celibate priesthood, or any other peculiar dog- 
ma of the Romish Church. But if unadulter- 
ated orthodoxy yet exists in the world, it is 
surely to be found in Paul's Epistles and 
Barnes's Notes; and here they are. It is not 
I that speak unto you ; but Paul and Mr. 
Barnes. Seeing the children of missionaries 



MOTHERS AS GUAEDIANS. 237 

torn from their parents ; seeing missionaries 
bringing their tender little ones from the ends 
of the earth, and leaving them to the chance 
wisdom and uncertain love of strangers, and 
returning over the sea, with heartache and 
desolation, I am not so sure but that St. Paul 
was right, and that even Mr. Barnes builded 
better than he knew. 

There are many I know ready to rise and 
say that other parents than ministers send their 
children abroad to be educated ; that mission- 
aries' children are warmly received, tenderly 
cared for, very happy, have two homes and 
two sets of parents, instead of one, and always 
turn out well; that missionaries must give up 
country, and it is very hard if they must give 
up hearthstone too ; and that the family is as 
powerful and important a part of the proselyt- 
ing influence as the man. Your testimony 
may all be true, and your reasoning unim- 
peachable ; but all the same, as between one's 
own children and any number of savages, I 



238 NUBSERY NOONINGS. 

believe the latter ought quick to upfly and 
kick the beam. And so, spite of pope, priest, 
and judge, e pur si muove ! 

There are not many, but there are some 
who respond to this view of the subject with 
a novel theory. They say : 

" The case, as you put it, rests on the most 
palpable petitio principii. You assume that 
mothers are, per se, best qualified to train and 
rear their own children ; while, in fact, the 
best thing that could be done for a large por- 
tion of the children of the current mothers 
would be to place them under the care and 
tutelage of more judicious, not to say more in- 
terested persons. Of a large number of the 
children of missionaries actually known to us 
who have been reared by their friends in this 
country, there is not one that has failed of re- 
spectability, and some of them have become 
eminent in worth and usefulness ; a result we 
should not have dared to predict had they 
been left to the training of their own mothers. 



MOTHERS AS GUARDIANS. 239 

There are thousands of mothers who have fine, 
bright, healthy children, but who spoil them 
by neglect or over-indulgence." 

" The Supreme Court of the United States 
may be assumed to know something," said the 
venerable judge to the young advocate who 
was cumbering his speech with profuse quota- 
tions. There is a common ground on which 
we all stand, a common starting-point from 
which we must advance on any line of argu- 
ment. I admit assuming that mothers are, 
jper se, best qualified to train and rear their 
own children. No proposition seems to be 
more self-evident. If that is begging the 
question, mendicancy must be the state of 
nature ; for no question is more ours by hon- 
est inference than this. If mothers are not, 
jper se, the ones to train and rear their own 
children, then the whole creation is illogical, 
instinct is untrustworthy, and there is no call 
to believe any thing. 

Mothers are, indeed, very imperfect. So are 



240 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

sewing -women and doctors and shoemakers. 
But, however injudicious a mother may be in 
the management of her child, it is easier to 
suppose that it is because she is personally un- 
wise than because she is the wrong person. 
Indeed, I think mothers will stand a compar- 
ison with members of any profession. The 
women of this country make as good mothers 
as the men make merchants and ministers, and 
no more deserve to have their children taken 
from them because they do not bring them up 
well than ministers deserve to be turned out 
of their pulpits because they do not convert 
their people to righteousness and temperance. 
When women claim equality with men in mer- 
cantile and mechanical accomplishments, we 
must return a verdict of " not proven." But 
when men charge women with failure in the 
one department which they hold by what we 
have hitherto supposed divine right, it is only 
courtesy which restrains ns to so negative a 
reply as "not proven." Looking at it from 



MOTHERS AS GUARDIANS. 241 

without, and judging only by results, woman 
vindicates her right to train her own children 
just as irrefragably as man vindicates his to 
traffic and plead and practice. 

Looked at from within, the case is equally 
strong. Nature and revelation alike put the 
child into the hands of his parents. Indeed, 
the fact of motherhood seems to be the one 
divine preparation, sometimes almost the only 
preparation, for a discharge of its duties. The 
woman who was frivolous and selfish becomes, 
with the advent of her little, helpless, tender 
child, thoughtful, devoted, conscientious. The 
new life calls out qualities which were never 
before developed. But doctors of divinity 
not only reckon motherhood no qualification, 
but, rather, count it a disqualification. Unless 
they mean to imply that the women who go 
out as missionaries are inferior to those who 
stay at home, that the mothers of our country 
are inferior to the women who are not moth- 
ers, they must mean that the reason why moth- 

Q 



242 NUESERY KOONINGS. 

ers are injudicious is that they are dealing with 
their own offspring. That is, the one thing 
needful in rearing children is that they should 
be some one else's children. " Train up a 
child in the way he should go," means always 
your neighbor's child. The first thing to do 
with your own is, in rustic parlance, "to swap 
him off." Let no man seek his own, but every 
man another's children. 

This is pleasant and piquant. It cuts across 
lots with a refreshing directness. Hereafter, 
when we see mothers over-indulgent, over-pli- 
ant, or in any way injudicious, we shall not 
need to devise how the character of woman 
shall be improved, her mind enlightened, her 
resolution strengthened, her firmness fortified. 
It is not that women are weak, vacillating, 
short-sighted ; that they need to think less of 
the present and more of the future ; that they 
need to be reminded how stern and unyielding 
the world will be to their children ; and that, 
as the mother can not always stand between 



MOTHERS AS GUARDIANS. 243 

her child and the consequences of his evil ac- 
tion, so it is the part of true, wise love to let the 
child suffer those consequences now, while the 
evil is small and the penalty light, and his par- 
ents stand by to succor and support, rather than 
shield him now, and leave him to bear by and 
by alone and unaided the heavy burden of in- 
dulgence unlimited and passions uncontrolled. 
This is a difficult task, hard to be understood 
or undertaken. But once establish that there 
is no inherent propriety in parents rearing their 
children ; that parents have no especial gospel 
to children, nor children to parents; that the 
hostelry, rather than the family, is the ideal 
type of human society ; and you have simpli- 
fied matters amazingly. It is a great improve- 
ment on the divine arrangement. The Creator 
seems to have planned it so that parent and 
child should elevate and educate each other; 
but what God hath joined together a doctor of 
divinity does not hesitate to put asunder. He 
does it not merely in special cases, which may 



244 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

require special treatment ; but he denies that 
there is any essential bond. In motherhood, 
jper se, there is no vital force. 

Of course, then, the missionaries are free to 
give their children over to strangers, while 
they look after the heathen. 

But with a great sum obtained they this 
freedom. 

And if women are not fit to bring up their 
own children, it remains to be seen what they 
are good for. 

"If neglect in this matter," says another, 
" must be censured, why not point the shaft at 
those rich and well-to-do mothers who at- 
tempt nothing more for their children than to 
kiss them good-night, and to make sure that 
they are far enough away in the morning to 
save themselves from unseasonable disturb- 
ance from infantile noise and caresses ? If 
mothers are ever justifiable in finding substi- 
tutes in the rearing and training of their chil- 
dren, can a stronger case be presented than 



MOTHERS AS GUARDIANS. 



245 



that of the women who must take this course, 
or rear their children amid the filth and de- 
basement of heathenism, or leave their poor 
husbands without solace or comfort in unge- 
nial climes and under the privations of heathen 
communities ?" 

It hath been said by them of old time that, 
to make hare soup, it is indispensable that 
you first catch your hare. Before you point 
the shaft at rich and well-to-do mothers, whose 
only care is to kiss their children and keep 
them out of the way, you must find such 
mothers. I never saw any, outside of books. 
There is a certain kind of story in which you 
encounter fabulous wealth, amid which live 
haughty heroines of peerless beauty, who sud- 
denly change their wedding-days for the pur- 
pose of showing their power over their lovers, 
and who come very near losing them in conse- 
quence, but who are generally saved by the 
skin of their teeth. In such narratives you 
do sometimes meet the unnatural mother who 



246 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

spends her life in a vain show, while the se- 
raphic Seraphina, her lovely young daughter, 
is given over to the ignorant but fond and 
faithful Bridget, by whom she is, strangely 
enough, nurtured into entrancing womanhood. 
But I hereby depose and say that I never met 
any of these persons. I never saw any moth- 
er, however rich and well-to-do, who was open 
to the charge of neglect or indifference re- 
garding her children. On this point there is 
no distinction between rich and poor. Moth- 
ers, as a class — and, to my observation, with- 
out exception — are, in point of affection, care, 
fidelity, perfect. I do not say that they are 
always judicious, always sagacious. Very far 
from it. But what they fail in is wisdom, not 
love. They are injudicious because they do 
not know what is the best thing to do, or lack 
nerve to do it ; not because they are too self- 
ish or self-indulgent to do it. Any man who, 
in a world of wickedness and weakness, points 
his shafts at mothers for neglect of this sort 



MOTHERS AS GUARDIANS. 247 

is simply wasting his ammunition, and de- 
serves, so far, to be classed among Dotty Dim- 
ple's "nidiots." The poorest mother in this 
land is not more devoted to her children than 
the richest. The lowest mother is not more 
careful than the highest. Through every grade 
of society — throughout the aristocracy of 
wealth, literature, and politics, just as truly 
and thoroughly as in the ranks of mediocrity 
and poverty — the first thought of mothers is 
for their children. The greatest benefit of 
wealth or rank in this country is reaped by 
the young, in the increased opportunity fur- 
nished for education and accomplishments. 

Even that bete noir, the woman's rights 
woman, is thoroughly innocent of the accusa- 
tion of neglect of famity. Not a particle of 
proof has ever been introduced to show that 
the children of the platform are not as well 
cared for as those of any other department of 
society, while a great many facts have inci- 
dentally disproved it. Even the missionary 



248 NOKSERY NOONINGS. 

women, who send their children away from 
themselves, do it not from dislike, but from 
a sense of duty, which, at the very worst that 
can be said, is but a mistake. 

Love for her children is rooted and ground- 
ed in the mother, and brings forth fruit of 
care and watch and patience and toil, from 
which no lot is exempt. I should feel myself 
a slanderer in the first degree were I to 
breathe a single aspersion against the senti- 
ment, the intent, the endeavor of mothers. 

As for the women who must employ substi- 
tutes, or rear their children amid the filth and 
debasement of heathenism, the very point in 
question is whether they have any right to 
create the necessity for substitutes. Have they 
a right deliberately to surround their children 
with this filth and debasement % Nor is there 
any comparison between the rich mother and 
the missionary mother. The rich mother 
does not find substitutes. She finds assist- 
ants, as she needs must and onght, to the ad- 



MOTHERS AS GUARDIANS. 249 

vantage of all classes : but I have yet to see 
the mother who abused her wealth by giving 
her child in exchange. Wealth and position 
impose their own duties — duties which often 
interfere with the companionship, solace, and 
entertainment to be had from children ; and 
these duties are just as sacred and just as im- 
perative as any imposed upon the missionary. 
Do we owe less to our own country than we 
owe to Micronesia % Are we any more bound 
to elevate Ah Sing than John Smith ? The 
woman who goes to Zanguebar with her hus- 
band, and spends her life as a useful mission- 
ary, is worthy of great respect, even if she 
does send relays of children to America, to be 
takefi care of and supported by other peo- 
ple. But the woman who stays in New York, 
and brings up her own children, and does all 
she can to be agreeable and intelligent in 
New York circles, is worthy of equal respect. 
And because she dresses well, and cultivates 
art, and entertains strangers, and dines at sev- 
en, she does not forfeit our respect. As for 



250 NUESEEY NOONINGS. 

sacrifices, and ungenial climes, and heathen 
privations, let us not so much as hear of them. 
The world is one, and women go to China and 
Japan because, on the whole, they choose to 
go. I question if the mass of missionary 
women make more daily personal sacrifice, or 
have a harder and more exacting, while they 
certainly have a more stimulating life, than 
the mass of women who stay at home. I ques- 
tion if the female missionaries of China or 
Armenia work more unremittingly, or have 
greater obstacles to encounter in their domes- 
tic affairs, or greater privation of comfort, than 
the farmers' wives of New England. And 
as for ungenial climates, one would say that 
from the pleasant summer haunts and heights 
of Asia our missionary brethren could afford 
to smile down upon us a smile that is child- 
like and bland when we talk of ungenial cli- 
mate, with our water-pipes freezing and burst- 
ing on Thanksgiving-day, and Cochituate Lake 
threatening to be stone-dry under no especial 
provocation ! 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 251 



XIII. 
HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 

Satan, who finds some mischief still for idle 
hands to do, takes exception to the fact that 
city mothers send their children to the parks 
in charge of nurses, instead of following the 
example of those foreign mothers who sojourn 
among us, and themselves accompany their 
children. Mothers are warned of the care- 
lessness, neglect, and cruelty of these hired 
nurses, and of the danger to which the little 
ones are exposed in person, in association, and 
in habits. 

That the character of those persons to whom 
little children are intrusted is of the gravest 
importance no one will deny. But to say or 
to imply that mothers are not to feel that they 
have done the whole duty of woman unless 
they stand by the baby carriage or watch the 



252 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

little romps themselves is to advance a theory 
so impracticable as to destroy our respect for 
the judgment and our interest in the opinions 
of those who originated it. No doubt the hap- 
piest life of all is that which gives to the moth- 
er constant supervision without misgiving or 
undue self-sacrifice. I know a baby who took 
his nap every day in the corn-field. On pleas- 
ant mornings he was enshrined on his basket- 
throne among the pillows and set adrift. Who- 
ever came by took a turn at the baby carriage. 
JSTow he was rattling along the gravel walk, 
now he was cooing in the grove; but always, 
moving or at rest, in the fresh open air. When 
sleep came he was rolled into the corn-field, 
where the tall stalks sheltered him from the 
sun, and rustled him the sweetest lullabies. 
Father and mother and field-hands and chil- 
dren and chickens and big dog shared with the 
nurse a living watch over him till he awoke to 
new joys with the very spring of life in his 
veins. 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 253 

But it is not given to every baby, alas ! to 
be born in groves and corn-fields. The cities 
are full of boys and girls playing in the streets 
thereof. Perhaps the best thing a city can do 
for its children is to lay out great parks for 
them to play in. There the rich and the poor 
may meet together, and for the one and for 
the other alike is the turf green, and the waters 
sparkle, and the broad trees cast their friendly 
shade. There the children can not come too 
often or stay too long. But if the conscien- 
tious, devoted, and all-too-anxious American 
mother is to feel that she must not permit her 
children to go unless she can attend them, or 
to remain in the parks without her, their free- 
dom of range must be pitifully curtailed. She 
is careful and troubled about many things. 
Society and sewing and a thousand household 
duties crave her attention and claim her time. 
I wish, indeed, this were not so. I wish she 
were lighter of heart and of foot, more free 
from care, more easily persuaded to leisure and 



254 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

open-air enjoyment. But the pleasure she will 
not permit herself she will secure for her child's 
health. And this is right. For Heaven's sake 
let us not now set a stumbling-block even in 
this path ! To say that children must not play 
in the parks without their mothers is simply 
saying that they shall not play there at all. No 
woman who is what she ought to be in her 
family and in society can afford to spend in 
the park as much time as her children ought 
to spend there. It would be a waste to her- 
self and to the world, and not least to her chil- 
dren. The true way is that which most moth- 
ers adopt, of sending the children out with a 
trustworthy nurse. A merchant might just as 
wisely undertake to keep his accounts himself 
as a woman to be every moment in attendance 
on her children. It is not economy, but ex- 
travagance of the most wanton sort. The ut- 
most care should be exercised in selecting a 
nurse ; and no day passes in which a mother 
should not be watchful of her children,' her 



HOME WAYS AND FOKEIGN WAYS. 255 

nurse, and all their ways. We hear occasion- 
ally of instances of cruelty, neglect, and injury 
which show this ; but we hear far oftener of 
forgeries, defalcations, and breaches of trust 
which show the danger incurred by bankers in 
employing clerks and cashiers. Nobody, how- 
ever, draws the moral that clerks and cash- 
iers are to be dispensed with, and bankers are 
to do the book-keeping themselves. We say 
only that the} 7 and the directors and the pres- 
ident should perform more thoroughly their 
own duty of inspection and supervision. The 
ordinary nurse is under no stronger tempta- 
tion to neglect than the ordinary cashier is to 
cheat. Perhaps it is not offensive to say that a 
woman is more inclined to be tender and lov- 
ing to a child than a man is to be just to a 
man, so that it is no harder for a woman to 
find a faithful woman than it is for a man to 
find a faithful man. Let the mothers, then, 
continue to send their children a-field with tried 
and trusty nurses, assured that in ninety-nine 



256 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

cases out of a hundred their own vigilance is 
ample to insure a vigilant care of the little 
ones, and that the danger incurred by the chil- 
dren is out of all ratio with the danger they 
would incur by being left wi thin-doors till such 
time as the mothers can take them out. 

When it comes to contrasting American with 
foreign mothers, I am more than skeptical. 
There is not on earth a more devoted and self- 
sacrificing being than the American mother. 
A foreigner is held up to our country-women 
for an example because she accompanies her 
child into the park. I have seen her on her 
winding way. The carriage stops at the park 
gates, madame alights, the nurse alights, the 
footman alights, the secretary — to whom the 
child has taken a fancy — alights, and they 
saunter up and down the graveled walks in 
assiduous attendance upon the little two-year- 
old. I fancy our country would be pleased to 
see the clerks of its public offices detailed to 
nurse the children of the public officers. But 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 257 

apart from that, is this child, surrounded by def- 
erent adults, really better off than the crowd 
of children on the greensward turning somer- 
saults, jumping rope, trundling hoop, rolling 
and running and leaping and tumbling in the 
wild freedom and frolic of childhood, with 
two or three nurses gossiping on the benches, 
and seeing that the young republic receive no 
detriment ? 

It is not necessary to believe that we are 
the people, and that wisdom will die with us. 
Neither is it necessary to assume that the mon- 
archies of Europe are actually effete, and that 
her institutions have bred only decay in all 
the departments of human life. America and 
Europe, let us sagely admit, have each its pe- 
culiarities, which are in their way admirable. 
Doubtless, too, Asia and Africa are not whol- 
ly wrong and irrational in many customs which 
we should be slow to adopt. But while it is 
unreasonable and childish to decry manners 
simply because they are foreign, it is certainly 
E 



258 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

not reasonable and manly to adopt them for 
the same reason. As between the two it seems 
rather more respectable to grumble against ev- 
ery thing un-English, as the English are said 
to do, than it is to be ready to drop your own 
ways and run after those of other countries, on 
the assumption that they are more refined and 
desirable, and that to live after the manner of 
Europeans, and not of Americans, is to be cos- 
mopolitan and cultured. 

For instance, in Europe social life is more 
circumscribed in certain respects than in Amer- 
ica. On the Continent children and young 
girls, and even young ladies, are not accus- 
tomed to go into the street without a nurse or 
other attendant. In England there is less re- 
striction ; yet even there the Maggie Greys 
are brought to account for having driven alone 
with the Mr. Traffords to the Bois de Bou- 
logne, and only wonder what would be said if 
it were known that they received calls from 
these gentlemen when the Mrs. Berrys are out. 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 259 

No one disputes the propriety of these customs 
in the countries where they originate. It is 
doubtless not without reason that girls are pro- 
tected abroad. That reason unhappily is that 
men are so bad that such protection is needed 
against them. It is matter of evidence that 
American girls, thoughtlessly and innocently 
following in Paris American customs, are mis- 
understood and insulted. That is a reason 
why they should do in Rome as the Romans 
do, but not why they should bring Roman 
ways to Boston. It is the glory of America 
that her men hold her women in honor. As a 
fact of the most commonplace character, young 
girls can walk down Beacon Street and Broad- 
way and Pennsylvania Avenue from morning 
till night not only without insult, but without 
attracting any special attention. Little girls 
can play in the parks without nurses and with- 
out danger, except such danger as comes any 
where from crowded streets or reckless drivers ; 
that is, if I may say so, without moral danger. 



260 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

Why, then, should we assume a weakness and 
wickedness which we do not possess? Since 
our way of life has given us a society in which 
young ladies do drive with young gentlemen, 
and do receive calls from young gentlemen, 
without in the least degree detracting from 
either their dignity or their delicacy, why 
should we not continue to build ourselves with 
strength in that direction rather than put up 
barriers of weakness after the Continental fash- 
ion ? I think the best men and the best wom- 
en of this country are not only as strong, but 
as fine and noble, as the best Europeans. I 
think the rank and file compare very favor- 
ably with the rank and file of any country. It 
is therefore extremely painful to see our peo- 
ple of culture and travel doing any thing that 
looks toward distrusting or deteriorating the 
inward self-respect and self-control, and quiet, 
unspoken, but universal faith in those quali- 
ties, which is, perhaps, the distinguishing feat- 
ure of our society, and substituting for it out- 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 261 

ward guards. I like to see little children play- 
ing by themselves wherever it is safe, and not 
simply where it is fashionable to play by them- 
selves. When I see a tall boy led around by 
a nurse, I do not feel " Here is a young gentle- 
man carefully educated," but "Here is a molly- 
coddle." The native American young gentle- 
man is doubtless at this moment "shinning" up 
an apple-tree, or sliding and striding down the 
rough stone balustrade of the front door-step 
to the great detriment of the knee-breeches 
which he has not yet outgrown ; but he is not 
more likely to grow up into a petit maitre than 
the much-benursed young gentleman, and the 
chances are also that he will have some occu- 
pation beyond boxing, billiards, and riding to 
hounds. When a young girl is guarded against 
dangers which do not exist, the chances are 
not that she will be more delicate and exqui- 
site thereby, but that she will be more affected 
and unreal. If we adopt foreign customs in 
preference to our own, let us do it because they 



262 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

are convenient, effective, or otherwise desira- 
ble, not because they. are foreign. 

When Ralph the Heir is putting force upon 
himself to marry Polly Neefit, his breeches- 
maker's daughter, he wonders within himself 
whether, after they are married, he shall ever 
be able to make her call her father " papa." 
Now in England the true Shibboleth of high 
breeding may be whether you give your moth- 
er her proper natural-history classification as a 
mammalian, or whether you call her by the 
ancient name of mother; but in tin's country 
it is not so. In many families, and some com- 
munities of good birth and breeding, papa and 
mamma are common terms. Others of equal 
claims to refinement know only fathers and 
mothers. I confess to a liking for the more 
universal, and perhaps homely, but certain- 
ly poetical, Saxon. It is nervous and strong. 
Papa and mamma suit well the infant lips that 
frame to pronounce them so quickly, and from 
which they come as fresh and clear as bab- 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS 263 

bling brooks ; but they always seem like bab- 
ble. Grown men and women referring to their 
papas and mammas remind one of bibs and 
ankle-tie shoes. Yet doubtless this is mere 
matter of habit, and people who have grown 
up with their papas and mammas find them as 
dignified as any father and mother. But what 
is puerile and ridiculous is for the " paw " and 
" maw " of a merry and sensible Southern or 
Middle State family, or the father and mother 
of a sober down-East household, to find them- 
selves, after a year or so of cosmopolitan soci- 
ety or Continental travel, suddenly transmuted 
into papa and mamma. And when this papa- 
fied and mammalized family returns to its na- 
tive community — a community in which every 
individual approaching adult age does very 
nearly every thing which is right in his own 
eyes, and attains an average rectitude quite 
equal to that of the family which is cribbed, 
cabined, and confined by strict European laws 
— when the grown-up daughters of this family 



264 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

of American citizenship and foreign travel sud- 
denly discover the necessity of asking " mam- 
ma's permission" every time they wish to go 
down town to buy a yard of ribbon or a sheet 
of music, the situation is not without humor 
in the eyes of the quaint un traveled Yankee. 

The same class of critics admire the supe- 
rior simplicity of the dress of our foreign chil- 
dren over our silken-clad home products. They 
lament the mysterious disappearance of little 
girls from our civilization. We have small 
women, it is said, bedizened like their mothers 
in silks and flounces, dressed up, or down, into 
an insipid and constrained prematurity. But 
the little girl — free, bright, child -like, natu- 
ral — is gone. 

Oh no ! We deceive ourselves. We over- 
rate our own power, and underrate the strength 
of nature. There is extravagance, I grant. 
Lack of independence, taste, character, does 
sometimes put little girls into unbecoming fin- 
ery, but not so often as we think. 



HOME WAYS AND FOEEIGN WAYS. 265 

I have been in the very French schools whose 
extravagant American dressing is deplored and 
contrasted with the substantial plainness of the 
foreign pupils in them, and I have seen not a 
single silk gown on the benches. I meet the 
little lasses on their way to and fro, and very 
pretty they look, with their fresh frocks and 
white aprons, and sailor hats jauntily posed 
above their " bhanged " hair, and swinging 
satchels sawing the air — but one silk gown 
have I not seen. 

" Opal," I say to a jpensionnaire, " do the 
girls wear silk dresses at your school ?" 

" JSTo," says she, carelessly ; and adds, " only 
Emma Paine has an old one made over." 

Pray believe me, Sir Critic, your eyes de- 
ceive you. The American mothers dress their 
little ladies so daintily and tastefully that you 
are won away from your judgment, and mis- 
take taste and skill for cost — the flash of cam- 
bric for the sheen of silk. If I were a betting 
man, I would not be afraid to wager my whole 



266 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

fortune that every silk worn on ordinary school 
occasions by an American girl is an old gala 
dress of her own or her mother's, remade by 
Buttrick's patterns and the sewing-machine, 
too much worn for state occasions, but still too 
strong to be wholly thrown aside ; and that its 
appearance on the school-bench is therefore a 
measure of economy, and not of extravagance. 

We do weak and wrong and foolish things 
enough. So much the more let not our good 
be evil-spoken of. 

And the little girl too, God bless her! is 
made of sterner stuff than to be so easily ex- 
tinguished. It would take more silk and sat- 
in than our ships can bring to stiffen her into 
a reliable and proper monotony. She is often 
subdued, but she is constantly breaking out 
in insurrection. She views her clothes with 
a suitable reverence, but there are moments, 
and even hours, of supreme indifference. Only 
this morning she came into the post-office 
while I was there. She had doffed her trump- 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 267 

ery over-skirts, for even the American little 
girl is not without a plain undress suit. She 
wore a big blue coat and cape, over which her 
yellow hair tossed in waves and waterfalls of 
sunshine. In her tiny fist she clinched a let- 
ter which she was to deposit. By utmost 
stretch of tiptoe she could hardly bring her 
bit of a nose to a level with the counter, be- 
hind which stood the young clerk; but full of 
her important mission, too young to be bashful, 
regardless of the men who lingered over their 
papers and their chit-chat around the stove, 
and intent only on her errand, she managed 
to transfer her letter to the clerk's outstretch- 
ed hand ; then bustling out of the door, which 
she could with difficulty open, she cried, with 
her clear, shrill, child voice, " Now, Benny, you 
make that letter go, 'cause I want it to go /" 
Evidently she considered the whole postal serv- 
ice of the United States dependent on Benny's 
good -will. But here was a real little girl — ■ 
just as real as if she had been born a century 



268 NUKSEEY NOONINGS. 

ago — real in her intentness, her simplicity, her 
imperiousness, her fearlessness — real in the 
eager smile that saw no one, and thought of 
nothing but to rush home and prove that she 
had done her errand — just as real as when she 
sits on the floor singing and rocking her doll 
to sleep, and "does wish Susie wasn't so un- 
fond of < Shoo, Fly.'" 

And just a little way beyond me in the 
western winter sunshine there is another little 
girl. She has ail the furbelows there is any 
call for, but the little girl is unmarred, the 
little soul is uncrimped, unstarched, free of 
fashion or formula. Bless your heart ! if yon 
could have seen how bravely she fought her 
lady mother in the broad aisle the other day ! 
It would have done your very soul good — you 
who fancy the little girl has been over-dressed 
into propriety. Lady mother evidently had 
doubts of Patty's behavior in Sunday-school, 
and wanted her to go where she could be 
steadily supervised ; but Patty, too, had rights 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 269 

which she knew, and knowing, dared main- 
tain, and insisted, pugnis et calcibus, on going 
into the little girls' class, and did go, and sat 
upright with a demure propriety which must 
have planted a sting in the maternal con- 
science. All her feathers and fooleries had 
not quenched the irrepressible sturdiness which 
glows in the bosom of the little girl, and she 
stood her ground with as much spirit and per- 
sistence as if she had been clad in a tow slip. 

Daisy comes softly stealing into the parlor 
where her mother sits with guests, and pucker- 
ing her rosy lips into her mother's ear, asks in 
loud, outraged whispers, "Mamma, tliall I w T ear 
my blue thath? It dothn't correthpond !" The 
unreo;enerate male mind, overhearing the in- 
quiry, is amazed, not to say awed. A five- 
year-old maiden already versed in the science 
of correspondences is a precocity not dreamed 
of in Sw r edenborg's philosophy. But be not 
alarmed. Daisy's immortal nature is not whol- 
ly given up to " thathes," nor does it appear 



270 _ NUKSEKY NOONINGS. 

to be materially deteriorated by the conscious- 
ness that all colors are not harmonious in com- 
bination. This knowledge is often a matter 
of instinct, and though Daisy is a connoisseur 
in fitnesses, she has a soul above " thathes ;" 
and, for all her dainty dressing, she can upon 
occasion forget her decorum, and rage into as 
pretty a passion as the most conservative could 
desire. 

Harry is not a girl. That is, he will cease 
to be in a year or two; but now, in white 
frock and petticoats, he is girl enough to look 
at. The same ruffling and embroidery that 
spoil his sisters wreak their full wrath on him. 
Is he spoiled? His picture lies before me, 
just taken. Apparently he trotted into the 
photographer's on his own account. He is 
capable of such things. No mothers hand ar- 
ranged him for immortality. His little legs 
hang bowed in stolid repose. The last tree or 
shrub has done harm to his cambric flounce. 
His dimpled hands lie in a blur of satisfaction 



HOME WAYS AND FOKEIGN WAYS. 271 

and unconsciousness ; and his fat wrists are 
not in the least abashed by obtruding half- 
way out of what must have been originally 
long sleeves, but which the arms seem ere- 
while to have outgrown. That sash — Ilium 
fait! — I knew it in its pristine brilliancy, but 
it lias been as familiar with soap-suds as the 
white frock, and is a standing proof that silk 
will wash. But what cares Harry, and what 
care I % The sturdy, strong little body is there, 
the brave, bright, handsome face, wearing yet 
only its inherited features, " the crown where- 
with his mother crowned him," and we know 
not what shall be. But he is not spoiled. 
That plump, solemn face, fixed now with un- 
wonted steadfastness, will brighten over a new 
frock. I have seen the great eyes snap, and 
heard the young voice shriek with delight, at 
a gay suit; but it was a surface joy. The 
child underneath goes his way strong in in- 
fantile vigor. 

No, the children are still here. The little 



272 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

girls have not left us. Do not let us tremble 
at bugbear's. We may stifle them all we can 
under superfluous and incongruous decora- 
tions ; we may dress them like dolls, and be- 
moan ourselves that they have turned into 
dolls, but all around the little elfs are laugh- 
ing us to scorn. Beneath all their flimsy fuss- 
ery the wild, willful, fantastic creatures are 
playing their fantastic tricks, laughing and 
crying, fibbing and fretting, romping and teas- 
ing, weaving their wonderful imaginings, fight- 
ing their infantile battles, doing their best to 
resist our encroachments, neutralize our folly, 
defy our ignorance, and to grow up into frank, 
natural, delightful men and women. It is a 
losing game, the more's the pity. By con- 
tinued trituration we shall worry them all 
down to pretty much one model of common- 
place, and by the time they are grown up we 
shall wonder what could have made their child- 
hood so winsome ; but during their short spring- 
time the little girls are out in full blossom. 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 273 

I think the reason of our sad wandering is 
that we are not careful to see accurately. We 
mistake inference upon slight induction for 
sufficient and actual observation. We glance 
and report. We do not watch. 

A reviewer, speaking of the late Sir Henry 
Holland, remarked that " in his published ' Rec- 
ollections ' he tells his readers that he never 
knew a great misfortune, that he never felt 
much sorrow — the death of his wife, in 1866, 
being the severest trial he ever experienced." 
But those who thought it worth while to re- 
member so trifling a matter as the death of a 
wife, remembered too that this wife was the 
eldest daughter of the Rev. Sydney Smith. 
Her going did not give her husband much 
sorrow, but her coming gave her father. great 
pleasure. She herself has told us that as the 
time approached for the birth of this, his first 
child, he constantly expressed his wish, first, 
that it might be a daughter, and, secondly, that 
she might be born with one eye, that he might 
S 



274 NURSEEY NOONINGS. 

never lose her. She came with two eyes, but 
was just as warmly welcomed as if she had not 
possessed the undesired redundancy. In fact, 
the delighted young father stole her away 
speedily, to the nurse's horror, and displayed 
her in triumph to Lord Jeffrey and the future 
Edinburgh Reviewers. 

Then came, says the same dearly loved 
daughter, such meditations, consultations, and 
discussions as would not be believed on the 
all -important matter of her name. Finally, 
not being able to find one to his taste, her 
father determined to invent one; and out of all 
researches and devices came at last the simple 
and not especially euphonious, yet sufficiently 
strong and characteristic, name of Saba. 

So little Saba flourished and grew fat till 
she was six months old, when the croup seized 
her with such fearful violence that it defied 
all the remedies employed by the best medical 
man that could be obtained. The danger in- 
creased with every hour, she tells us. Dr. 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 275 

Hamilton, then one of the most eminent med- 
ical men in Edinburgh, was sent for, could not 
come, but ordered them to "persevere in giv- 
ing two grains of calomel every hour ; I never 
knew it fail." It was given for eleven hours. 
She grew constantly worse. The medical man, 
as Lady Holland calls him, when we should 
say doctor — her term sounds too much like 
John Chinaman's "Melican man" — the med- 
ical man in attendance then said, " I dare give 
no more ; I can do no more. The child must 
die; but at this age I would not venture to 
give more to my own child." But the fond 
father would not give up. He said to the 
timid physician, "You can do no more. Ham- 
ilton says, Persevere. I will take the respon- 
sibility; I will give it to her myself." He 
gave it, and the child was saved. 

I thought if the little longed-for daughter 
who had been paraded with such foolish, fond, 
sweet exultation at a very early stage of her 
existence had struggled out of the world after 



276 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

six months of sunny life, her nearest friend 
amono- the survivors would not have said that 
he never knew a great misfortune, that he 
never felt much sorrow. I thought the little 
six-months maiden would have left a sorrow 
deep and lasting. 

She did not die, but lived — lived in an at- 
mosphere of tender love and admiration and 
cherishing. When she was a woman grown a 
suitor came in the person of Dr. Holland. 
The pleased father seems to have quite for- 
gotten his jesting wish that he might never 
lose his daughter, in satisfaction with the excel- 
lent match she was about to make. " We are 
about to be married," he writes to Lady Hol- 
land, " and Saba will be one day Lady Holland. 
She must then fit herself up with Luttrells, 
Rogerses, and John Russells, etc. ; Sydney 
Smith she has." In the summer he welcomed 
Dr. Holland's three children as if they had 
been his own to spend the whole autumn in 
his house. 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 277 

So she who had been a most loving, be- 
loved, and dutiful daughter in her father's 
house, and who can hardly be supposed to 
have turned about, and become a selfish and 
unlovely wife, lived with Dr. Holland thirty- 
two years, and died; and her husband, who 
possessed so many charms of manner and dis- 
position, tells us that he never in his life knew 
a great misfortune or felt much sorrow. 

But he lost a wife twice. lie had three 
young children when he married Saba Smith. 
One would say that the death of a young wife 
and mother, leaving three forlorn little ones, 
might make a slight impression on her hus- 
band, might seem even to be worthy the name 
of a great misfortune, might produce some- 
thing that could be 'called much sorrow. If 
she were a bad and worthless woman, her life 
and her motherhood were a great misfortune. 
If she were good, what could her death and 
their orphanage be ? 

Is it worth while with pains and care to poh 



278 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

ish a jewel that is to be so thoughtlessly worn, 
so lightly lost? 

So far I had written, dipping my pen in gall 
not half bitter enough, when the thought came 
to me : It is impossible. Sir Henry Holland 
never said any such thing. Sydney Smith was a 
man demonstratively fond of his family, and it 
stands to reason that his daughter's husband 
must have been a human being with a certain 
sense of propriety and of dignity. Moreover, 
Sir Henry was a gentleman and a man of so- 
ciety, and of too much acuteness to make so 
stolid and clumsy a statement as this, apart 
from any lack of sensibility. To the law and 
to the testimony. Out of his own mouth shall 
this beloved physician be condemned, or he 
shall not be condemned at all. I sent for the 
" Recollections," the book from which his crit- 
ic drew the offensive remark, and found that 
from these "Recollections" Sir Henry formal- 
ly excludes all family history ! He scarcely 
mentions either death or marriage. The ab- 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 279 

surdity, the ridiculousness, the naivete of his 
statement rest wholly with the newspaper re- 
porter who made it. He himself says nothing 
of the kind. He makes but two allusions to 
his wife in the whole book, and these, though 
very tender, are but remote allusions. He 
does not say that the death of his wife was 
the severest trial he ever experienced. He 
does not say that his wife died, or that he 
ever had any wife. What he says, with sim- 
plicity, dignity, and sufficiency, is this: "I 
have much cause to say, on thus looking back 
upon it, that my life has been a prosperous 
and happy one. But for the loss — inevitable 
as time goes on — of many endeared to me by 
the ties of family and friendship, I might 
fairly speak of it as untouched up to this 
moment by any serious misfortune? 

Once two gentlemen of eminent abilities, 
spotless character, and all lovable qualities, 
were discussing theology in the parlor. Forth 
from the hands of her tiring -maid came a 



280 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

damsel of two years, fair as the morning, all 
sash and cambric and curls, all ravishing with 
daintiness and purity and sweetness of soul 
and body. I am no indiscriminate advocate 
of child -worship. Children are often ugly, 
unattractive, disagreeable, and to be kept out 
of sight and sound ; but this little atom floated 
into the great hall like a sunbeam, and I led 
her into the parlor and stood back to watch 
the surprise. She trotted about on her two 
little musical feet, and her silky curls flutter- 
ed, and her blue eyes danced, and her little 
figure shone all over with heaven's own light — 
and to her and of her those two men spoke 
never a word. Then, filled with rage and 
despair, I drew her under the very eyes of 
the mighty theologian, and he looked upon 
her, and said, " Oh ! ah ! — Still, if moral abil- 
ity combines with original sin in respect of 
justification, adoption, and sanctification — " 
went directly on with the argument, just the 
same as if an angel had not descended from 



HOME WAYS AND FOREIGN WAYS. 281 

the skies to give them light; and I said within 
my heart, "It is of no use. The good God 
made them, and I suppose he made them 
as perfect as would answer, and we must put 
up with it — after having used all possible 
means to discipline them to better things." 
Apparently they are but rudimentary beings. 

"Her 'prentice hand she tried on man." 

The very best and most gifted among them 
have but an imperfect development. A man- 
child left to himself bringeth his mother and 
sister and wife and all his female well-wishers 
to shame, and a man left to himself never 
ceases to be more or less a child. 

This fable teaches why it is not good for 
man to be alone ; why he, so much more than 
woman, needs a help meet for him, that his 
eyes may be opened, that he may discern be- 
tween the good and the evil. 



282 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 



XIV. 

BABY- TALK 

When the new town-house was taken, the 
nursery was appointed for the top of the 
house. It was sightly and airy and spacious, 
full of light and sunshine. From it the noble 
domes and slender spires, even the far hills 
and the winding river, were clearly visible ; 
and high up above library and drawing-room 
and dining-room the children could make as 
much noise as they pleased, arrange their play- 
things in all that disorder which is dear to the 
infantine heart, and pursue the momentous 
affairs of life without running the risk of in- 
terference from trivial, frivolous, and capri- 
cious elders. Truly it was a happy thought, 
this establishing the nursery at the top of the 
house. 

But only a happy thought. For practical 



BABY-TALK. 283 

results it would seem that the nursery is the 
one place the children will not go to. A line 
of stereoscopic views reaches down every stair- 
case. All the chairs in the chambers are 
marshaled into one railroad train, and I am 
allowed a cricket to sit on only by sufferance. 
My own room is invaded, my best shawl con- 
verted into a tent, all my pretty little Shake- 
speares serve as building-blocks, and I am only 
too happy if I am not myself pressed into serv- 
ice as architect. There are children under 
the dining-room table, children behind the 
sofa, children in the china-closet, and, as I 
live, there is Baby-in-Breeches at this moment 
dragging The Other Baby out of the best draw- 
ing-room cabinet, where they have been snngly 
bestowed at hide-and-seek ! House-top nurs- 
ery indeed ! You may turn it into a servants' 
room, or a billiard-room, or a studio, but the 
children are bubbling all over the house, and 
never by any accident deviate into the house- 
top, unless, possibly, a bust in clay is waiting 



284 NTTKSERY NOONINGS. 

there its transition to marble, in which case 
undoubtedly Baby-in-Breeches will catch the 
general spirit of criticism, and " think that eye- 
brow too high, papa," and stick a billiard cue 
into it by way of definition, at the cost of an 
hours reconstruction by the patient artist. 

It is a disorderly and reprehensible custom, 
this overflow of the children beyond all bounds, 
this determined onset of sturdy irrepressibles ; 
but it can not be denied that thus we do get 
delightful and unexpected flashes of fresh in- 
dividual nature. 

I go into the blue room of an errand, and 
behold! Star-Eyes curled up on the middle 
of the bed, asleep, under a damask napkin. 
Presently in my neighboring room I hear a 
velvet voice calling " Cusnabe !" I hold my 
peace, to see wliereunto this thing will grow. 
Twenty times she calls " Cusnabe !" in every 
variety of soft intonation, evidently experi- 
menting on her own voice. Then a thud, a 
pause, patter, patter, patter, and in she shines, 



BABY-TALK. 2S5 

all dewy with sleep, only a little snip of cam- 
bric falling off her shoulders, but her fine 
clothes tucked under her arm and dropping 
along the way. Then, without a word, with- 
out invitation from me, without the least sign 
of encouragement, she climbs into my lap as 
calmly as if she owned me, and unto this end 
w T as I born, and for this cause came I into the 
world; and the very assurance and assump- 
tion, which in a grown person would be intol- 
erable, in her are simply adorable. Are shy- 
ness and shame, then, merely conventionali- 
ties % Who shall teach Star-Eyes the dividing 
line between the charm of self-assertion and 
the charm of self -withdrawal ? No one, in- 
deed; for in the swift -coming years swiftly 
will come to her the tremors of self-distrust 
and timidity and dread of encroachment ; but 
as yet her universal confidence, her absolute 
impossibility of intrusion, are her guarantee 
of winsomeness. 

And now her mantle of sleep falls off from 



286 NUKSEEY NOONINGS. 

her, and the blue eyes wander about the room. 
They meet a paper doll on the bureau. 
" Whose is that naice 'ittle doll ?" 

" It is yours. It was sent to you in a let- 
ter." 

Then ho ! for the bureau, and ho ! for 
all the rest of the house; and gathering up 
her bestrewn garments in a straggling bunch 
under her arm, down the stairs she creeps 
cautiously, and is soon again deep in the 
mysteries of life. 

Baby-in-Breeches is fond of his sister after 
a high and mighty fashion. When he is gloved 
and booted and close-buttoned to the chin in 
all the dignity of going out to spend the day, 
he turns back after the door is closed to hug 
her and kiss her and ejaculate "Pretty creat- 
ure !" Yet she comes in from her play in the 
yard quite pale and agitated, and presses up 
against me close, as she asks, eagerly, " Will 
Prince Butler snap Starry's legs off ?" Prince 
Butler is the warlike dog of a warlike general 



BABY-TALK. 287 

around the corner. And that little rogue of a 
Baby -in Breeches has been telling her that 
Prince Butler will snap her legs off ! Telling 
her? He tells her under my very eyes. He 
leaves his sweetest tidbit at the table to come 
round and whisper his awful screed to Star- 
Eyes. But Star-Eyes has found a way to turn 
his flank, and now, when the miscreant ap- 
proaches her with his Gorgons and chimeras 
dire, she simply puts up her own face — " Will 
Prince Butler snaj} Starry's legs off?" 

"No, indeed." 

Whereupon, turning to her Evil-Suggester, 
she annihilates him with her "No, indeedyT 

And the little wretch even dares to practice 
upon me. " Cusnabe," he says, as he stands 
contemplating his various expressions in the 
great looking-glass, " I climbed a tree in the 
Park to-day." 

" Oh no ! you did not dare to climb a tree 
and break your legs ?" 

" Yes, I did. Dangerous tree, too !" 



288 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

"Who wonders that man's inhumanity to 
man makes countless thousands mourn, when 
Five-year-old instinctively enhances his pleas- 
ures by the mental torture of his inferiors ? I 
do not think we give men half credit enough 
for their goodness — for their magnanimity 
and tenderness and benevolence — when they 
have these qualities. We do not know what 
up-hill work their attainment is to the natural 
male mind. We little think what longings to 
be cruel he has overcome who has learned to 
be 'merciful, what spasms of self-denial have 
gone to the upbuilding of grace in him who 
was the man-child of nature. 

It is a momentous occasion when Star-Eyes 
is first admitted to the family table during the 
temporary absence of Nurse. Her docility is 
pathetic. " Star-Eyes must not put her hands 
on the table," and off they go. "Fold your 
hands, Star-Eyes," and the fat little darling 
hands are folded with a solemnity of expres- 
sion fully adequate to a doctorate of divinity. 



BABY-TALK. 289 

I do not wish to use the word humbug, but 
this poor midget is tricked by nature into be- 
lieving that her deportment at table is an im- 
portant matter. I wonder if the same rule 
holds good with us. Are there higher classes 
of beings to whom our peccadilloes seem as 
phenomenal, as innocent, as interesting, as hers 
seem to us? She folds her hands demurely, 
and is wondrous attractive in the attitude; 
but Baby-in-Breeches is eagerly thrusting both 
fists into the strawberries and cream, to the 
imminent peril of table-cloth and jacket, and 
the annihilation of propriety; and though in 
the interest of good morals he must be re- 
proved, his eager unconventionalism, his abso- 
lute unconsciousness, are not less attractive. 
And what is his unquestioning obedience of 
Star -Eyes but natural virtue? Her sphere 
is limited. Society and morality, speaking 
through their authorized representative, im- 
pose upon her the law of sitting with folded 
hands, and that law she unhesitatingly obeys, 



290 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

and will obey till she is demoralized by bad 
example. That is, when she finds all the rest 
of us reaching forth our thumbs to pick out 
the plums, she will unfold her own thumbs, 
and explore and exploit ; but at present she 
has no designs in her inmost heart but a com- 
plete and devout observance of law. There 
may be such a thing as original sin, but the 
sin that I see most of is acquired sin. 

It is Sunday, and what shall the Babies do ? 
Railroad trains of chairs, and Prince Butler, 
the dog, can not be allowed on Sunday, that is 
certain. Star-Eyes can be left to herself, for 
of herself is she never boisterous, but Little- 
Breeches esteemeth not one day above another. 
He is fond of pictures, however, and will listen 
to reading with an almost startling intentness, 
gazing into the face of the reader with a wide- 
eyed eagerness, as if he 

' ' Drew 
With one long look your whole soul through 
Your lips, as sunlight drinketh dew." 



BABY-TALK. 291 

A picture of "Joseph Sold by his Brethren" 
serves as text for a long sermon on — well, it 
must be confessed, on camels as much as on 
Joseph. Then I say, " Now, if you will get me 
a Bible, I will read you the story of Joseph.'' 

" The Bible is lost," says he solemnly. 

" Oh, no. I think you can find a Bible in 
the book-case." 

" Yes," he says, with renewed and increasing 
emphasis, " there has been a Bible lost out of 
this house. It sa}<s : 

"'Saw young Anna Faber 
Come walking into church.'" 

Blessed and beloved apostle ! Sweetest 
saint in all the calendar! Worthy successor 
of that disciple whom Jesus loved, gentlest 
and tenderest of all the Sons of Thunder, I 
should not have dared to follow my heart's 
promptings and class you with those holy men 
of old ; but when out of the mouth of babes 
and sucklings your praise is perfected, it is not 
for me to stand by and say them nay. 



292 NURSEKY NOONINGS. 

So Little - Breeches is presently convinced 
that it is a volume of Whit-tier, and not the 
Bible, that is lost out of this house, and he 
starts off on a tour of exploration. Bibles are 
not so scarce that he need take a Sabbath- 
day's journey, but his views are vague, his 
mind is discursive, and his search prolonged. 

Presently, after long silence, a hollow voice 
resounds from some remote fastness — " Cus- 
nabe ! I don't care to hear 'bout Moses !" 
And the culprit heaves in sight with a big ka- 
leidoscope, which was put on an upper shelf 
in a dark closet for the express purpose of 
keeping it out of his way. So that is the rea- 
son why "Moses" was so soon nipped in the 
bud; but w T hat possessed him to go Bible- 
hunting in a clothes-closet? 

And what feeling is it, what divine discon- 
tent with the established order of things, that 
makes him come in and throw himself in a 
chair, with his back to the front, and his heels 
as high up the back as the supply will permit ? 



BABY-TALK. 293 

Is it a physical or a mental, a nervous or a 
social solace, that this attitude ministers to his 
perturbed spirit ? 

And what becomes of his clothes ? Oh ! 
his jackets ! Oh ! his knees ! Oh ! the seat 
of his trousers ! " Little-Breeches has gone out 
without his jacket, and will certainly get his 
death o' cold I" says Ann, coming in and hold- 
ing up the mite of a jacket she has found. 
" No, Ann, do you not see that is his best jack- 
et, and he has on his old one ?" 

His best ! But what a scarred old veteran it 
looks ! And if this is the jacket, how then 
shall the trousers appear — those eight pairs of 
absurd little knee-breeches which it was fondly 
hoped would bear him triumphantly through 
the summer months and through the Indian 
summer till the nipping frosts appeared. 
Alas ! before the Ides of August the daylight 
shone through them. 

As for his hats, there is no question what 
becomes of them. They are hung on the 



294: NUESEEY NOONINGS. 

pump -handle, to be gently soaked overnight 
with the gentle rain ; they float in the bath-tub ; 
they are brought home tenderly by any kind 
friend or faithful servant who may have rec- 
ognized them in the city park or the village 
green; they are reconstructed into foot-balls 
and butterfly - traps, and buckets for bailing 
mud-puddles. They crown the heads of hob- 
goblins made out of broom-sticks and other 
available poles. It is easy enough to see what 
becomes of the hats. 

At noon Little-Breeches is dressed afresh — 
clean linen suit, new trousers, shining face, 
smooth hair, striped stockings well - gartered 
up, new slippers, pansy in his button -hole — 
a little stiff with the consciousness of being 
well-dressed, but a most appetizing morsel. It 
rains, but he has a new pair of rubber boots 
which he is over-anxious to try, and his infat- 
uated mother gives him leave to walk to the 
barn. To walk to the barn by a roundabout 
ramble through the garden seems to him but 



BABY-TALK. 295 

a small stretch of privilege, but by the time he 
enters the barn his clothes are so thoroughly 
damp that when he emerges from the flour- 
barrel, into which he entered as his first ex- 
ploit, he is a mass of paste, and the brave 
bright clothes have to be immediately and ig- 
nominiously set to soak in the wash-tub, where, 
I believe, they remain to this very day. 

What can you do? His troubles seem to 
come naturally, not wickedly. Even when for 
some real and heinous crime he is sent prem- 
aturely to bed, he lies and moans, " Oh ! 
now my heart is broken !" He evidently con- 
templates the situation not as punishment, but 
as affliction. His busy little brain is all at 
sixes and sevens about cause and effect, right 
and wrong, sin and suffering. 

"Ann," says he, strolling in two hours after 
dinner, from which he was missing — " Ann, 
have I had my dinner ?" 

But Ann is non-committal, and says, " How 
should I know whether you have had your 
dinner or not ?" 



296 NURSEKY NOONINGS. 

" Was I at the table, Ann?" 
" Eo, I did not see you at the table." 
" Then of course I have not had my dinner." 
Would you vex this acute little reasoner 
by forbidding him the dinner he forgot to 
come home to, and can not even now tell 
whether he has eaten except by external tes- 
timony and abstract argument. We take no 
note of time but from its loss, and he never 
loses any. Play is his driving and thriving 
business. School he stoops to — the sturdy, 
old-fashioned school of books and study and 
recess — but the city Kindergarten is abom- 
ination in his eyes. 

" Can I tell Miss Kindergarten " — thus he 
always calls his teacher, whining most piteous- 
ly — " can't I tell Miss Kindergarten you want 
her to let me come home when I feel feeble V 
And evidently he has at this moment an over- 
mastering attack of feebleness. 

The mature male heart is easily imposed 
upon. 



BABY-TALK. 297 

" Baby-in-Ereeches is a frail bud," says papa. 
"It is too cold and wild for him to go to 
school to-day," and Little - Breeches rejoices 
greatly; but in one half -hour the frail bud 
has vanished from sight, nor appears upon the 
scene again for three, four, five hours, and 
then blows in, ruddy, disheveled, shouting, 
strong, and altogether happy, except for being 
blown in. 

The well-beloved Professor Prophet blesses 
the house with his presence, and Baby-in- 
Ereeches is warned beforehand that he must 
not talk at the table. It seems hard to put an 
interdict on those sweet lips, but, mine own 
dear little boy, there is no way but this. Baby 
promises faithfully, and puts on a forty-horse- < 
power pressure of silence. In five minutes — 
■B.\e hours to his waiting and seething soul — 
he whispers, "Mamma, can't I speak now?" 

"No! sh-h!" says mamma. 

" Can't I whisper, mamma ?" 

"No! sh!" 



298 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

" Mamma," in an ever crescendo and start- 
lingly audible whisper, " can't I jest tell you 
there was a skunk at our school-house to day ? 
Oh ! there was, mamma, and he smelt aw- 
fully." 

It is a grievous and sore affliction that Baby 
can not go to church, and when the tidings 
burst upon him that he is to stay at home, 
how does he make the powers that be feel 
that they are righting against God by roaring 
at the top of his voice, amid strong cryings 
and tears, " Oh ! I wanted to hear Professor 
Prophet's sermon." But because his elders 
wish to hear it in peace, and because he would 
hear it with multitudinous wrigglings and 
twistings and whisperings, with constant and 
uncertain down-sittings and up-risings, his soul 
is refused that spiritual food, and he remains 
ignobly at home. Yet was a better sermon 
ever preached than his who called a little 
child unto him and said, " Verily I say unto 
you, except ye be converted, and become as 



BABY-TALK. 299 

little children, ye shall not enter into the king- 
dom of heaven." 

Star-Eyes is so honey-sweet that what seems 
good in her eyes seems generally most lovely 
in all other eyes. Can a violet take on tem- 
pers ? Can a rosebud rage ? Can a white 
lily -cup redden with wrath, or a harebell 
brew mischief? Then shall Star-Eyes cease 
to do charming and learn to do evil things. 
But what if her most dazzling charm be evil- 
spoken of ? And yet, when it comes to patter- 
ing into my room with a big wet towel, and 
scrubbing indiscriminately my table and bu- 
reau, my vases and baskets, I must demur. I 
am instinctively certain, moreover, that it is 
conscience of sin that has brought her to me, 
and full well she knows such vagaries would not 
be allowed in the authoritative regions below. 
How can I mar her innocent enjoyment ? But 
how can I let her irretrievably mar my wares ? 
There is no inherent vice in a wet towel. She 
is simply exercising her divinely bestowed 



300 NURSEKY NOONINGS. 

faculties, expending her beneficently provided 
surplus energies. How stupid in us not to 
surround her with objects for which a wet 
towel has no terrors ? How cruel to thw^art a 
human soul in the interests of a senseless piece 
of furniture ! With paint and glass and gild- 
ing to create a sin out of a natural and healthy 
desire ! And all the while I am indulging 
these eminently moral reflections I am medi- 
tating an undercurrent of treachery. Taking 
advantage of a momentary deviation of her 
thoughts, I surreptitiously seize the towel and 
drop it down stairs. But Star -Eyes is too 
quick for me. She sees the tail of the vanish- 
ing comet, and laboriously climbs down the 
stairs, and returns with it triumphant. The 
process is repeated in all its parts. This will 
never do. No more cowardly compromise. I 
must breast the storm. I put the towel on the 
window-seat beyond reach. She tries to pass 
me and grasp it. I bar the way. She fails to 
comprehend the situation; she is slow to un- 



BABY-TALK. 301 

derstand that I, her adorer, am really and 
steadfastly opposing her will. But the facts 
force themselves upon her at last. Then how 
splendid is the storm! She knows nor re- 
straint nor repression: only the natural and 
full play of feeling. All the rose-leaf face is 
flushed with sudden fire. The sunny blue 
eyes are aflame with wrath, and down upon 
my book descends her little fat hand, charged 
with the electric fury of her soul. Then she 
is afraid. It is a new experience, and she has 
forebodings. As she looks up I see the old 
fury and the new fear contending for mas- 
tery; and what with her sweetness and her 
spirit, and her perfect transparency, I find her 
more adorable than ever. 

Star-Eyes is going to church. I am ashamed 
to mention the motive power which sends her 
to take her place in the great congregation. In 
the days of our forefathers it would have been 
because she was old enough for duty. In 
these degenerate days of right-hand fallings- 



302 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

off and left-hand defections, it is only that some 
one has given the small sinner a sash, or a pair 
of shoulder - knots, or some other vanity, and 
the nurse remarks that Star-Eyes has so many 
pretty things it is a pity she should not go to 
church — which remark, overheard, perhaps 
destined to be overheard by the vain and con- 
ceited male mind, results in the fiat that Star 
Eyes shall go to church. It is not supposed 
that she has any " meeting clothes ;" but a 
resolute nurse gathers together a sufficient 
wardrobe, and " nobody is going to take this 
girl to church but her father," says the vain 
and conceited male mind. So Star-Eyes makes 
a triumphal entry into church, and sits quietly 
snuggled down among the big people — a lit- 
tle folded pink -and -white blossom hidden 
among full-blown roses, till a clear, pleasant, 
earnest voice suddenly rings through the 
church, louder to the ears of her startled par- 
ents than the noise of many waters, "Now, 
Harry, let Star-Eyes take ee fan, and 'oo see 
me fan !" 



BABY-TALK. 303 

The vain and conceited male mind, brave at 
home, but cowering before that still, small voice 
in the church -pew, would fain remove the 
transgressor, but his cup is not jet full. The 
young worshiper tolerates the singing and the 
prayers, but can not yet subdue herself to the 
sermon. She finds her little cloak more edify- 
ing, and amuses herself with vain attempts to 
put it on. Holding it in front by the two 
sleeves, she swings it back vigorously over her 
head, and might effect a lodgment after the 
twentieth or so trial if a trumpery bonnet on 
one side, and a big, bare head on the other, did 
not continually break the force of her swing- 
ing. Grown people and their belongings are 
so terribly in the way ! When the cloak is 
wiled out of her hands, she creeps down upon 
the floor, and proceeds to investigate the 
shoes and stockings of the assembly ; and, lest 
she carry her researches into other pews, she 
is presently and unconsciously lured out of 
church. Out of church ? Not quite so fast. 



304 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

When half-way down the aisle she suddenly 
awakes to a sense of the situation, utters a pro- 
longed shriek of disgust, settles squat on the 
floor, utterly refusing to budge, and is swiftly 
and succinctly caught up and shot out by a 
male mind very much less vain and conceited 
than the one that led her in half an hour be- 
fore. 

And now when this poor little demoralized 
wretch is put to the torture, and asked, " What 
did you do at church ?" she disdains to look up 
from doll and tea-set, but answers as she has 
been taught, with smiling and self-satisfied 
alacrity, " Behaved badly. 1 ' 

Behaved badly. I suppose so; but the 
church services are never so interesting as 
when a baby is pawing and creeping and ex- 
perimenting around, darting a flash of real life 
into the somewhat artificial atmosphere which 
envelops us. In the child we come nearest to 
seeing the naked soul. It is as if we could go 
back to the creation and behold how it was 



BABY-TALK. 305 

done when He spake. Our theology, strong in 
its intellectual frame - work, needs ever to be 
modified and vitalized by fresh and loving ob- 
servation of life. The Bible is no more a rev- 
elation from God than is this little child, and 
by the one, as surely and pleasantly as by the 
other, can we learn the divine will and the 
divine method. 

"Papa," says Little -Breeches, radiant with 
approaching fun — " papa." 

" Well." 

" No, papa ; say ' what,' Papa." 

" What ?" 

" JSTothin'." Tremendous applause. 

" Papa," says Star-Eyes, in a brilliant encore. 

" What T 

"Nuffin." Yells of delight. 

" Little-Breeches," says papa. 

" Eh ! eh ! You can't fool me /" 

"Star-Eyes." 

" Nuffin !" And she turns red in the face 
in her eagerness to prove herself equal to the 
U 



306 NUKSERY NOONINGS. 

emergency, nor could all the wit of all the 
world more thoroughly " bring down the 
house." Little - Breeches thinks we are ap- 
plauding his shrewdness, and Star- Eyes has 
the ecstatic consciousness of having made a 
great hit, and we are all happy. 

Yet the little simpletons manage to gather 
many scraps of knowledge, if their education 
be rather desultory. Few things are talked 
about that Baby-in-Breeches does not fasten 
upon . in some fragmentary way. He has 
picked up the whole of "Barbara Frietche" 
long before he can speak intelligibly, but none 
the less does he deliver it with head-shaking 
energy and true oratorical fervor. Seven-year- 
old Muggins has been amused for several even- 
ings at bed-time by having repeated to her the 
exquisite chorus in Atalanta in Calydon, rep- 
resenting the death -scene of Meleager, to 
which she has listened with absorbing inter- 
est, examining and very satisfactorily compre- 
hending it line by line. Little-Breeches is con- 



BABY-TALK. 307 

structively in bed and asleep, but really pranc- 
ing about in his night-gown from jpillow to 
post, not to say making occasional raids down 
stairs. If any thing is safe to say about him, 
it is safe to say that he does not hear a word 
of the poetry. But the next morning, waking 
before Muggins, he bends gently over to see if 
her eyes are open, and seeing they are not, 
says softly : 

"Who is this bending over thee, lord, with tears and 
suppression of sighs?" 

And I feel very much as if the old Roman 
Catholic miracle might after all be true, which 
makes the nine-days-old baby open its mouth 
and tell who was its father. 

Also Muggins, whose taste is omnivorous, 
delights in that exceptionally charming story of 
Mrs. Alexander's, " The Wooing o't." " Though 
it seems to me," she says, just about to fall 
asleep, " Maggie was very nice and pretty, but 
I observe that she sewed a great deal. She 
was always at work on a piece of sewing." 



308 NURSEKY NOONINGS. 

"Never mind," pipes a wee, sleepy voice 
from under the neighboring bedclothes, " Nev- 
er mind, Muggins, Trafford loved her all the 
same." If we are looking at the stars, and 
trying to pick out and point out the constella- 
tions, Little-Breeches is sure next evening that 
he can " go out and find the bath-tub" which 
is his nomenclature for the Great Dipper — 
'tis as like as my fingers to my fingers. 

It is time for the children to go home — 
home into the broad, fresh, blooming country, 
where they can run and play and breathe and 
live. The city is too hot and stifling. Even 
the parks are not safe from the fervid sun by 
day, and by night there is a perfect shower- 
bath of children falling out of bed from rest- 
lessness. So they are arrayed in spotless dust- 
ers, duly furnished with lunch-baskets, and the 
carriage is at the door. Five-year-old is grad- 
ually collected from the balustrade, the back- 
yards, and the neighbors; Star-Eyes sits up 
soberly on the back seat, her dear little legs 



BABY-TALK. 309 

stuck straight out in front, her soul uplifted 
with the dignity of " going on a toot," as she 
has somehow learned to call it. Nurse and 
Escort depart, well furnished with shawls, 
straps, and injunctions. 

"And how did you make the journey?" is 
eagerly asked when Escort returns. 

"Oh, finely. Star -Eyes behaved best of 
all." 

" And did Little-Breeches keep clean ?" 

" Clean ? Never was such dirtiness seen as 
he presented." 

" Why did not you look out for him ?" 

" I looked out for his head. That was all I 
could do. I could not undertake his clothes." 

Of course not. Of course he got at the 
lunch-basket before they left the station, and 
was eating all the way to New York. He was 
constantly making little dabs at the milk-bottle, 
and spilling it on the seat. Then he wiped it 
up with his sleeve. Then, observing that his 
sleeve was wet, he wiped that with the other 



310 NURSERY NOONINGS. 

sleeve. Dust and cinders very soon finished 
the business of that jacket. Then there was 
bread-and-butter to be dropped, and always 
on the buttered side, and he was ever and 
anon sitting contemplatively down on pieces 
of ham, and his pea-nut shells were a grief of 
heart to the porter, who had to come in and 
sweep Baby out several times during the jour- 
ney — but why will they let pea-nuts be peddled 
through the cars ? And so the blessed Baby 
was safely convoyed home, and rapturously 
lost within five minutes of beino- set down at 
his garden-gate. 



THE END. 



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